a towering inferno of cinnamon goodness

The alarm went off this morning and I dragged myself out of bed, half asleep, and stumbled into the shower to commence the early morning ritual which would end with me sitting behind a desk in order to earn a paycheck.

Mid-way through my lather, the pre-rinse portion of my hair washing routine, a loud shrieking sound began wailing in the hallway of my apartment building. The steam from the shower was slowly beginning to thaw out my brain, and it dawned on me that this was the fire alarm which was making the ear-piercing racket.

Unsure of what to do in my groggy state, but alert enough to realize that I didn’t want to start the morning by being burnt to a crisp because someone a few floors down failed to get their bread out of the toaster before their breakfast evolved into a towering inferno of cinnamon goodness, I stepped…with soap laden hair…out of the shower, threw on a shirt and sweatpants, and headed for the stairwell.

The apartment complex that I live in more closely resembles an episode of ‘The Golden Girls’ than it does ‘Melrose Place’. And, this being the case, when I stepped out into the hallway, my neighbors didn’t consist of the ‘girls in skimpy lingerie cowering for their lives and latching onto me for protection’ variety. Rather, it was more like a bingo enthusiast convention.

As I walked down the stairwell, I stopped to check out each hallway on the seven floors below me. While I’d like to say that this was in a good Samaritan effort to save any trapped women, children, and pets, I must admit that I was simply trying to get an eyeful of blazing tapestry on at least one of the floors. Having been dragged out of my shower, shampoo now seeping down into my eyes, I felt that I was due some type of recompense. Something burning, smoldering, or even charred would have been adequate repayment.

Unfortunately, all I saw on each floor was a bunch of confused looking elderly people, wandering around in bathrobes and walkers trying to decipher whether there actually was a fire and, in the event that there was, whether it was really worth the trouble to wander too far from their doorways.

At this point, two sprightly 70 year olds quickly zipped past me on their way down the stairwell…‘zipping’ in the sense that, for 70 year old ladies, they were moving fast. By younger person standards, the term ‘amble’ would be more accurate, but considering their age, this ‘amble’ was truly more of a ‘zip’.

The lady holding a plastic bag stuffed with what appeared to be scraps of yarn and other knick-knacks was telling her friend with the blue tinted hair that, “this has happened five times in the past three years…and each time I just grab everything I can and run out!”

“Were the other times false alarms or was something really on fire?” her teal coiffed partner asked.

“No, nothing has ever actually been on fire,” she answered, “but you never know when it will be the real thing! So I’m getting out!”

A few seconds after they descended, the alarm stopped blaring, at which point I trudged back up to the eighth floor and began the second act of my shower. Once again, having just re-shampooed, the fire alarm decided that it was time for an encore performance.

And as it blared from the hallway, I decided that if the building was truly burning down, what better place was there to be than one where I was surrounded by water?