Fire

I think it was my mom who always told me to think about what to do in case of a fire in every place you stay. It might sound a bit dramatic (but, then again, so is my mom) and the odds are that you forget all about it the moment the first smoke starts filling the room. However, being a control freak it gives me some feeling of safety. So every time I stay in a hotel or change apartments one of the first things I do is figure out how to flee from them (also I’m afraid someone with a chainsaw could storm in at any time).

In the apartment I live in now the easiest way out is to jump off my balcony. It’s not as bad as it sounds, because I only live on the first floor. However if the fire is on that part of the building I’m not quite sure what I’d do, probably text the final selection of funeral songs (see below) to someone. In hotels it’s usually less simple because generally speaking they’re pretty high buildings so usually I practice running up and down the stairs a couple of times (and then I think I’m about to have a heart attack and stop caring about fire…. Hey it works for me!).

Anyhoo, there’s also an additional aspect to fleeing from fire: what do you take with you?

In hotels it’s pretty simple; some clothes, your passport, your money, your credit cards, that’s basically all you’re going to take with you. At home it’s a whole lot harder. Back when I was still living at my parents place the answer was quite simple; in case of fire I’d grab my cat and run. Seeing that my cat is fluffy, adores me, and is pretty light she seems the most obvious answer, also because letting your cat burn to death but do rescuing your Lego seems a bit… oh I don’t know… would ‘heartless’ be the word?

However now that I live in my own apartment I’m catless and also what I do and do not take with me is all my own responsibility. Which, I should add, sucks because blaming yourself for something isn’t half as entertaining as blaming someone else (sooo in the spirit of being single: if you think you’d like me blaming you for everything, mail me!). Anyway, so if my apartment building does end up being one huge fireball and I wake up in time before the thing totally collapses it’ll all be up to me to decide in the minute or two I have before jumping out the window what to take with me.

Lemme tell ya, not going to be easy at all! The passport and the money thing of course remains the same as in hotels but because I keep that with me in the pockets of my pants, all I have to do is put them on (which is something I think I would do before jumping out a window, it seems to me Martha Stewart would agree that’s the decent thing to do). That leaves me with about 1 minute and 50 seconds to look around my room and think; what can’t I live without?

Books aren’t that big a deal, I mean it would suck losing them but most of my books are not that difficult to replace. The only book I’d really hate losing is my American Studies handbook Enduring Vision, because it has a bunch of election results, all of the supreme court justices, the constitution and the amendments (and also it was friggin expensive!). But that book is really heavy, so how does that go with jumping out of a window? Where is Martha Stewart when you need her? Damn that bitch.

Ok, so no books, cds? A lot of my cd’s are pretty rare and difficult to find. Some, mostly my Zucchero stuff, have taken me years of going through Italian record stores, it’s going to be almost impossible to replace all of them. But can I carry all my cd’s with me? And even worse: LP’s! I have a bunch of LP’s that are seriously not replaceable (well in theory yes, but it would take me another 10 years and the odds are I’d lose interest, which would be a shame). Pictures would be another thing, I have a couple of framed ones I’d want to take with me but they’re heavy and some of them are huge. Plus they’re partly made of glass, how would that go with jumping??

Maybe I should just move my favorite things back to my parents place. Sure, I wouldn’t be able to use them or look at them, or read them, or listen to them but at least they would be save.

But what if they’d have a fire? Are they gonna save their own stuff and the cat before saving my stuff? Maybe they would……… but maybe…..

Damn that cat!