Sleeping in sweatpants has been a habit for years. While it goes against all appropriate
marriage protocol, I am convinced that safety should outweigh beauty. To prove my point….
Recently, after spending the day doing yard work, I bypassed
my evening dressing ritual after showering.
Sleep came soundly…until 3am…when my son burst through our door and
yelled the one word no one wants to hear at 3am. “FIRE!!!!!”
My brain slowly started processing…Fire? Where?
What? Huh? And then I looked down….Where are my pants? The thoughts continued with….Why is there
smoke? Why can’t I see anything? And then rounding back to...Where are my
clothes??? Nothing gets your heart
pumping faster than the realization that you are in a fire...in the room farthest
from the exit…and you are stark naked. At
this point, I had fallen off the bed and lie tangled in a sheet in the smoke-filled
room. For one brief second, I started to
run down the hall, in the sheet, only to have good sense stop me dead in my
tracks. I think I was willing to die in
the flames, rather than risk never being able to look my neighbors in the eyes
again.
My husband, who WAS wearing sweatpants, was running down the
hall. Apparently middle age brings on an
“every man for himself” mentality.
Fortunately, my 21-year-old son is still young enough to
multi-task. He was able to get dressed
AND put out the fire. While I was still searching
for pants, he grabbed the garden hose and drenched the flames which had quickly
grown from a rogue candle. I stumbled
down the hall after locating appropriate fire attire, feeling good that I
wasn’t preventing him from ever marrying by exposing what 50-year-old women
look like sans clothing.
On a related note, when cooking bacon and removing the pesky
smoke alarm, replace it promptly. The
smoke will eventually reach it in the drawer, but most likely not until the
fire is out. The firemen made sure to
point this out on several occasions while surveying the damage. You also will not be allowed back in until
they have knocked open at least one wall and declared it “safe.” They will try
to make you feel as stupid as possible for leaving a lit candle on a stack of
newspapers. Our middle son had a lot of
explaining to do.
We are extremely grateful that we survived the fire with
less than $1000 damage. We are now a
flameless-candle family with eight smoke detectors in a 1300-square-foot house. Everyone received new pajamas for
Christmas…in a box with a fire extinguisher.
