Last night I suddenly awoke to what I though was a rogue alarm clock; what I thought was my rouge alarm clock, screaming in my ear. It seemed to be impossibly loud and I kept smacking it and hitting snooze, which didn’t seem to work. I then fell out of bed trying to unplug it from the wall–also unsuccessful as that sucker has somehow melded to the outlet.
So the jolt from the floor made me realize that, perhaps, this sound was coming from outside. A quick look in the hallway confirmed my suspicion, as a crowd of confused looking foreigners shuffled down the stairs, wearing nothing but pajamas and snow boots. I joined them.
Once we all finally made it downstairs, we found all the Ihouse doorways to be clogged and most people were just kind of shouting and laughing at each other over the ear-splitting sirens. I met up with some friends and, after stopping to go to the bathroom, we went to the front room to sit on the couches. Hey–it was cold outside.
Emergency vehicles sprayed the streets with mutli-colored flashing lights, their violent warnings came through the windows and played out on the faces of those wondering what the hell was going on. We just sat and tried to talk on the couch; some people were outside, but not many. Everyone was in various stages of dress and undress–one guy in a towel, another with just pants on. Tim was in gym shorts, a white t-shirt, and sockless dress shoes. Danyelle had her laptop–“Hey! This is the most expensive thing I own!”
Soon Connor came over and said that the stairs he came down in the East tower were “full of smoke”. We didn’t believe it–if it were a fire, there would be more panic, right?. “This is a real fire…there’s like an actual fire.” Meh. Sure, whatever, Connor. “You guys are idiots,” he probably added.
And it was true. I’ve never seen a lamer response to a fire; hundreds of people milling around, blocking the exists, standing in the middle of fire doors, keeping them open; staying inside. Connor said he even saw two people running upstairs in a panic, though that might’ve been the guilty party (“I didn’t know what they did, but they sure did”).
Firefighters marched through carrying large metal canisters of something, they hurried, but were rather nonchalant about the whole thing. Police, too. After about 15 minutes, rumors circulated through the crowd. The smoke was actually a fire extinguisher. Or maybe dust. But what was the fire extinguisher being used for? Who knows. Someone was messing with it. The alarm stopped. People cheered.
Everyone shuffled back to bed. Probably, like me, couldn’t sleep the rest of the night.
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