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ring of fire
06/18/2008 = 11:55 AM

When I was a kid, we had a house fire. Wiring, I believe, was the final finding of the marshal, though I maintain that it was a faulty clothes dryer coupled with an unemptied lint trap. Empty your lint traps, people.

At any rate, we were fortunate. We all, including our cats, got out safely. And the house is about as back to normal as it ever was. My parents still live there.

Anyway, any time I see news of a fire, my heart starts to pound, and I remember that cold day (it was December 25th, which meant nothing to our family except that I'd worked a double shift so my gentile coworkers could have Christmas at home), putting a very frightened (and scratchy) Missy under my sweatshirt so I could carry her and myself out the window in my brother's room.

House fires do not smell good, the way fireplace fires or bonfires or barbecues smell good, or even the way cigarettes and pipes smell good to some people (myself included, though I no longer smoke myself).

House fires smell like melted plastic and crayons on the dashboard, or like the rubber that gets left on the road when cars crash.

The best good that came out of that experience, for me, was the eight hours I spent at the laundromat, washing house-fire-smell from what clothing we were able to salvage. I people-watched all day, and wrote much of it down in my notebook. I converted my notes into a series of essays for my Advanced Composition class, and it was some of my best comic writing, ever, because I had to keep laughing, or I'd have been crying.

No, I don't still have them, and I don't care. Mr. O. kept them, to read to future classes. I'm incredibly proud of that.

But fires.

I hear sirens, or see on the news that there's a blaze, and automatically I check what street, to make sure no one I care about is getting burned up. And my heart doesn't go back to normal till I know.

So Prince Gomolvilas just saved all of Staten Island from burning down the other day, then beat himself up in his blog because two homeless people, who were in the abandoned house where the fire originated, perished because, if you believe him (I don't), he was too slow in calling 911.

I commented, along with everyone else, that he is still a hero, and I hope he believes me.

Then I read outfoxed's backwater had suffered a blaze as well. Lightning on the roof trusses. He and his wife and the dogs got out. Everything else, well. They have insurance, and memories. Other than that, we don't yet know, and I certainly don't expect him to update his blog right away.

He shouted at the dogs to get them out, and there was a lot of other shouting, and the dogs are now looking sad, because they think they did something wrong, to be shouted at.

I'm busy right now, checking all my other peeps and tweeps to make sure that, if it's hot in here, it's just you.

Tags: fire

drinking: sam's diet wild cherry clear soda
listening to: Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
food craving: puddi-cake-a-cookie