The smoke alarm system in my house is quite the temperamental
machine. I learned that about 70% of the times it went off, it was because
someone was cooking, and that the other 30% of the time, it was because the
battery in one of the alarms was dying, which meant that all of them would make
a loud, annoying blip every minute. The one that needed a new battery also
flashed a red light during the loud, annoying blip, but there was no way of
knowing which alarm needed the battery without watching the alarms for the
blip/light combination.
(Blip doesn’t
accurately represent the sound my smoke alarm makes. The sound it actually
makes is better represented by “a giant mosquito doing opera warm-ups in
Klingon.” But I don’t know the onomatopoeia for that, so let’s just go with blip.)
This, of course, meant that the smoke alarm was 0% of the time
responding to an actual fire. This coupled with the fact that fire alarms in
high school were nearly always drills and were infrequently a response to an
actual emergency made it very easy for me to become desensitized to fire
alarms. According to classical conditioning, I never had a chance.
When I’m confronted with a fire alarm, there are only a few basic options:
1. If it’s the middle of the night, I wake up (sometimes—I have
been known to sleep through the siren), groan, roll over and go back to sleep. Often,
I’m later awoken so that I can help my family check which one needs the new
battery. Our smoke alarms never run out of battery during the day.
2. If it’s during my waking hours, I shout “Is the house on fire?”
to whoever’s cooking, and once they say no, I continue with what I was doing
before.
3. If I’m the person who’s cooking, I shout an expletive, turn the
stove fan on, open the windows, grab a kitchen towel, and jump up and down
while swinging the towel wildly at the smoke alarm until it stops screeching.
Wow it has been a while since I’ve drawn. I formally apologize to myself for this picture.
4. If I’m at school, I roll my eyes, grab my building keys, and
leave through the back door of the dorm so that no one will notice me leave the
crowd. I have better things to do than wait for the fire department to figure
out why my century-old dorm is so flammable.
The most memorable fire drill of my freshman year of college occurred
at about 5 in the morning—three hours before I was supposed to get up. Hoping
that the home principle applied, I rolled over and put my head under my pillow,
thinking that if I just ignored it long enough, the alarm would stop.
My
roommate Summer was a little bit more responsible/less lazy than I was, and she
made sure I got out of the building, where we rendezvoused with everyone.
“Everyone” in this case included Theo, who for reasons we all made assumptions
about was wearing no shirt and a towel around his waist.
He later explained that he had done that because he was just
wearing boxers and grabbed the towel (I guess?) to preserve his modesty
(honestly, I’m still not clear on what part of this made sense). We told him
that since half the guys who evacuated were also shirtless, and since it was
five in the morning we would all have been too tired not to assume he was just
wearing shorts.
Well, it was either not draw this picture or delay the post again.
Later we all found out that the “fire” had likely been caused by
burnt toast, just like the last two fire drills. Later still I noticed a wikihow article
posted on every floor’s bulletin board. I don’t think we had any
toast-triggered fire alarms after that.
At the beginning of the summer, my sister was heating up a Lean
Cuisine for lunch. Lean Cuisine is her standard fare, although since she’s
thirteen and weighs about sixty pounds when soaking wet, she should probably be
eating Get Really Really Fat Cuisine. I was in my room internetting (definitely
a word) when I heard my mom call up the stairs, “Marina, can you come here? We
need your help.”
There was absolutely no urgency in her voice, so I finished my
game of Mahjong Titans and sauntered down the stairs. I was on the landing when
I noticed a sort of grayish haze hovering in front of me. Then I smelled smoke
and decided that it probably wouldn’t hurt to run the rest of the way down.
It smelled a lot worse in the kitchen. Mom said something to the
effect of “The microwave went crazy,” and then I saw this (please note that all black/brown parts are ash, not shadows, and that this microwave was originally white):
Essentially, our microwave did a reverse Michael Jackson.
Me: What happened?
Sister: I don’t know! I put the Lean Cuisine in
for the right amount of time…
Me: Where is it?
Mom: We put it
out on the porch. Where are you going?
Me
(halfway up the stairs): I need my camera to take pictures so I can blog about this!
This is the most depressing food picture I will ever put on this blog. It might also be the only one.
And when we tried to clean out the microwave with water/soap/paper
towels, this happened and barely made a dent in the soot:
It’s like the part of 101 Dalmatians where they make themselves look like Labradors. But worse in many ways.
We managed to restore its original color with one of those Mr.
Clean Magic Erasers, which do indeed work like magic. Amazingly, the microwave
came back to life and (after three months) the kitchen doesn’t smell like
burning and death. Mr. Clean: for all your microwavemageddon needs.
