This Girl Is On Fire

When I was very young, my parents bought a smoke detector and installed it on the ceiling of the hallway outside my bedroom door. I have no idea how I so completely and utterly misunderstood what I’m sure was very clearly explained to me, but I believed this meant we were definitely going to have a fire and this new device was there to alert us to when it was happening.

I don’t really remember being concerned about the house, but I was going to be cranky if anything happened to my stuff, so I came up with a plan. I don’t know why I assumed the fire would happen in the middle of the night, but I did, and that actually worked out to my advantage because I had footie pajamas. I realized they were like having a built-in suitcase. I could put items in the pajama legs and they couldn't fall out the bottom. I started jamming down into my PJs whatever I wanted to save from the fire, every night. My favorite toys, my beloved blanket, my money, Snoopy, etc. Not even as cumbersome as grab-and-go. It was wake up and run. Everything I’d want or need was in my pants. Ingenious, really.

What I don’t understand is why I took it to a survivalist level. Every night I put a flashlight in my pajama leg. I remember that was the heaviest item in my inventory and it would always drop straight to the bottom and bang against my ankle. I guess if you think you’re going to be outside at night because of the fire, a flashlight makes perfect sense. But why did I think I’d need food? We didn’t live out in the middle of nowhere. We were in the suburbs with perfectly nice neighbors all around us, many of whom had fed me before. Nevertheless, I always put a can of tuna in my pajama bottoms. I know you’re thinking, what a poor choice, Barb, how would you get it open? Well, I was way ahead of you there. A can opener went down my pants too. Let me tell you, all that metal was cold against my little bare legs until my body heat had a chance to warm it up.

Eventually, I had to use the bathroom during the night, and my mom caught sight of me and my crazy huge pajama bottoms. She helped me unpack the situation figuratively and literally. Although I don’t recall the exact conversation when I learned what smoke detectors are actually about, I do remember her saying, “I’ve been looking everywhere for this!” when the can opener came out.

Mom didn’t seem too fazed by my perfectly innocently making trouble around the issue of fire, perhaps because it had happened before. When I was learning to talk, I made a most unfortunate contraction out of “fire truck.” I would say it whenever I saw one or heard a siren, no matter where I was or who I was with, leading to some uncomfortable moments for my mom. She said she and my dad tried switching to saying fire engine, but “fingin” never took.

One cold winter night, many years later when I was an architectural intern living in Ithaca, I woke up and could see my apartment filling with smoke. It was happening. I was on fire. I KNEW it would happen in the middle of the night! All that planning and mental preparation as a little girl led me to this moment. I was ready. Nope, not so much. I called the fire department, put on my coat, and waited outside for them to arrive, not giving one thought to my things.

And let me confess, when I say I called the fire department, what I mean is, between waking up out of a dead sleep and having adrenaline flooding my body, I struggled mightily with remembering how phones work. It took several attempts, with shaking hands, before I was able to successfully complete a call and reach the fire department. Somehow, I couldn’t remember, do I dial first and then hit the talk button, or is it the other way around? And I kept hitting the off button instead of the dial button and hanging up on myself. It was maddening, and each mistake just made me panic more. Luckily for me, there was a volunteer firefighter living in my apartment complex and she got to my place lightning fast, decked out in all her gear.

It turned out there had been an electrical fire in my heating unit. The fire department got that taken care of, but there was concern that some components within the wall might still be simmering. They brought out this high-tech heat-sensing device that was in its own protective case with a foam cutout perfectly shaped around it, like something in a Mission Impossible movie. They ran it all along the walls searching for any sign of hot spots, but couldn’t detect anything. They said they thought the fire was out, and probably nothing in the wall was still smoldering, but I should probably call an electrician to come and look as soon as businesses opened again in the morning. And then they left me.

Well, I certainly wasn’t falling back to sleep. I just walked around watching and waiting for a wall to burst into flames. I also wanted to take a shower to get the smoke smell off of me before other workers started showing up. I’m not saying I was nervous, I’m just saying I took the fire extinguisher into the bathroom with me.

Once it got to be 7:30 or so, I started making calls – to the apartment management team, electricians, and my favorite, the office voice mail system. “I don’t think I’ll be in today. Although the fire department has left, they say I might still be a little bit on fire and all my doors are wide open, so I don’t feel great about leaving.” A message like that gets you a concerned call back from your boss later in the morning.

The electrical fire really did leave a terrible smell, so my front door, sliding glass patio door, and all my windows were wide open. And it was a bitterly cold winter day. And I had no heat. This was a bad combination of things. My heating unit was salvageable, but it needed some new parts. It was Friday and I was told even if parts came in over the weekend, the maintenance crew wouldn’t be back until Monday. I asked, with what I assume was my not-happy face, if there were any unoccupied units in the complex, and upon learning the answer was yes, I begged the management and maintenance people to take the parts I needed out of the heater in that apartment. Success! They got it fixed that afternoon, but I had a heat storage unit, which heats up ceramic bricks at night when the electricity costs are low, and then the bricks give off warmth during the day. I was hours away from feeling anything warm coming out of that unit.

That’s when I remembered a coworker was having a get-together at his house that night. I decided to go; to get away from the smell in my apartment, enjoy being in a home with a fully functioning heating system, and share my more interesting than usual day. I hadn’t had a chance to pull together any food to share, but I decided they’d probably cut me some slack if I just brought something from the store. I bought quite a bit of room freshener for my return home, and what I thought was a very appropriate snack to share – smoked almonds.