Things You Only Think About When Your House is on Fire

A few notes. First of all, I do feel very badly that I haven't had any time to write in my blog over the past few weeks, especially when I promised that I would. Ultimately, however, it came down to the fact that I had a ton of things that I needed to be working on, and I was already spending about an hour a night writing my novel, which, of course, meant an hour spent writing things that were not my various essays.

But now those essays are done, finals are upon us, which means that for a Creative Writing major like me, the semester is nearly over. Which means more time to write things that are not essays, and hopefully more time to blog about the things that I'm thinking about. Because I don't know about you, but I like doing this. I was going back though the archive a few nights ago, trying to figure out which blog entries to include for my portfolio, and for a while, I just sat there and read my own stuff. It's probably horribly narcissistic to do that, read your own work, but I found myself greatly inspired as I read my thoughts at the beginning of November, when NaNoWriMo was still just one great big source of ambition and anxiety. Or the thoughts of me in mid-October, still getting over a breakup and wondering why the hell it would be a good idea to try to write a novel in thirty days, in the busiest month of the year.

We lose those thoughts if we don't take steps to preserve them. We lose the day to day details, the minutia, the things we thought about last week. Sometimes that's a good thing, and sometimes, I find myself wondering what was going through my head when I sat down to write three months ago. I feel like I've come a long way in a short time, and at times, it seems to be happening too fast for me to even catch my breath. And that's why I'm glad that I have this record, why I will continue to work on keeping this blog updated. Because it's nice to look back and see my own personal little narrative, written not as some epic tale or idealized chronicle, but as the day to day experiences of the real me.

Now, there's one other thing I wanted to do with tonight's entry. While I was at the Essay Reading Night (congratulations to all the winners, by the way), I was asked if I would share my own essay here on my blog. So I've decided to do that, because I was asked, and I always like to be accommodating, but also because I'm actually rather proud of this piece and I think it deserves to be shared. So if you're interested in hearing about what happened during the Great House Fire of 2007, keep reading after the jump. If not, well, um... I guess I'll see you tomorrow.

Often times, there are moments that are so inconsequential upon their happening that we fail to notice them, fail to appreciate their importance until years have passed. With the focused clarity of time, we look back and are given pause within reflection. Other times, these moments are brilliant, explosively singular events that shake you the moment they occur and will continue to dominate your thoughts long after the fact; moments that leave you wide awake at night, perhaps shaking, as you ponder all that could have been, and all that wasn’t.

I almost died in a fire once. I like to phrase it like that, to give the entire event an aura of melodrama, of mystery, of excitement and adventure before I’ve even been asked the first question. It’s the kind of statement that invites a response; clearly, there must be some story associated with such a declaration, since, had I not survived the experience, I wouldn't be here to write about it now.

People will tell you that when you’re about to die, time slows down. The adrenaline starts pumping and everything becomes liquid-like slow motion moving around you. This is a lie. When you’re about to die, everything happens very quickly, far more quickly than real life should sensibly allow. The only thing that changes is you, because within that moment of perfect fear, you are faster than you should be, faster than you are capable of being. The world has not changed; you have become the change, able to think and feel and perceive, for a brief instant, a hundred different thoughts simultaneously. You can reflect on your entire life in the time before this heartbeat and the next. You can wonder about the fact that you should be terrified right now. During these moments, it will not seem strange to you that your mind is racing, that you shouldn't be able to think this many things at once and remain calm. You shouldn't be able to have so many thoughts, and yet you do, and that's perfectly fine.

You will reflect that it smells like campfire smoke, your burning house, which is a good smell, one that you associate with childhood memories and camping trips, and it will also occur to you that this is your house that smells of campfire smoke, a thought that is somehow comforting in its familiarity and terrifying in its implication. All of this goes through your mind in that single instant.
It is only in the retelling, the remembering, many moments after this one, that the realization sets in, of what you yourself are capable of attaining when pressed. The realization leaves you breathless, leaves you convinced that you have violated some fundamental law of the world and that although you have escaped your ordeal, you are criminal for doing so. It is a thought that will hold you tightly and keep with you, presumably, until the end of your life as you find yourself envisioning a today in which you do not exist, had you not been quite as fast as you were.

My story began, as many good stories do, when I awoke in a bed that was familiar, but was not mine, to the shrill sound of a smoke alarm going off. It was my parents’ house. It was Saturday. Almost noon. I don't know about you, but for the first few minutes after I awaken, I'm essentially worthless, my brain still hazy with sleep and half-remembered dreams. I did not equate the sound of a smoke detector with thoughts of danger. I imagined my father was most likely find new and exciting ways to burn food in the kitchen, because he does that, sometimes. No danger. Go back to sleep. I got up anyway and went to take a look. I do not know why and I wish that I did, because it saved my life.

Beyond the kitchen, in the living room, there was the most terrific blaze I have ever seen, a true bonfire that someone had thoughtlessly constructed on the family coffee table. I had enough time to reason that this was incorrect, that fires should not be where the coffee table was, that, in fact, we didn’t even have a fireplace, and thus, the entire enterprise of indoor fire was clearly out of sorts.

And then comes the realization that starts with one screaming “Holy shit” as you make with the running and the acting, when survival instinct, primitive and reptilian, joins with long forgotten childhood memories of “what to do when something’s on fire.” I tried to find a fire extinguisher, first. In my own home, I kept one in the kitchen, because one time, I caught my own stove on fire and it made for a few very exciting moments as I tried to figure out how a fire extinguisher actually works. That fire was my own fault, as one is told never to leave a pot of water boiling alone on the stove, because one may forget about it until the acrid stench of burnt metal and a small conflagration where one's pot was reminds, rudely, that it doesn't take two hours to boil water, you idiot. But that was a much smaller incident, more like a campfire, really, than the bonfire now facing me.

This fire was far more exciting, its menace far more palpable in the form of the black smoke that, in the mere seconds it had taken for me to perceive the danger had already begun to fill the air and smelled strangely of camping and the great outdoors. The family dog, in his kennel, was panicking. The cat was nowhere to be seen, although cats are masters of self-preservation, so if anybody was going to live through this, it would be her. What was I doing? Oh, right, the fire extinguisher. Yeah, I never found it.

I heard my own voice in my head tell me in a bored, know-it-all tone: “You know, it only takes a few seconds before the carbon monoxide will knock you out, and if you go down, that would be really bad.” Jesus, do I really sound like that? I hope not, but I’m coughing now, so I decide that I might be right, regardless of how much of an asshole I sound and maybe it’s time to abandon the fire extinguisher and make with the fleeing.

They tell you not to waste time looking for your pets. You’re a child when they tell you this and they understand that children are stupid enough to get themselves killed to save a dog. Adults, it follows, clearly know better, that animals can be replaced. I was halfway to freedom and safety when it occurred to me that, if the dog died, my brother would hate me forever, because it was his dog. And, I will admit, I like the dog, too. So I went back and saved the dog, risking a fiery grave so I could have the pleasure of dragging one hundred pounds of terrified Rottweiler along with me out the door.

I also noticed a basket of laundry near the encroaching blaze and I was reminded of my childhood fear that of having to flee a burning house in my underwear. There are few things more terrifying to a child than standing outside practically naked in front of all the police and fire fighters and ambulance people and neighbors, and hell, the news crew will probably be there, just to compound your embarrassing five-year old misery.

I grabbed the basket of laundry and kept going. The living room was pretty much engulfed, so it's out the front door, into the street. It's a cold December morning and it's raining lightly, and I wonder if the rain will put the fire out. The rain is icy beneath my bare feet and makes my toes go numb and I reflect on the fact that the rain won't really become a factor unless the entire house is doomed.

I have enough time to imagine the homeowner's association giving me a fake citation for having an unleashed dog and not wearing pants in public, as though the compound of infractions made the entire offense infinitely more egregious.

So now we’re outside, in the cold safety of the rain, and I’m barefoot, in my underwear, dragging the dog with one arm and a basket of clothes in the other. This strikes me as a perfectly ludicrous situation worthy of a punch-line and I begin to laugh, perhaps a little hysterical, as I realize that I’m carrying something else in one clenched fist: my cell phone. Had it been with me the whole time? I dialed 911 and voiced my distress in a calm, reasonable tone: "My fucking house is on fire!" And then, having never said that, I giggle to myself, very likely due to oncoming hysteria.

As I stood there, shivering in the street, waiting for help to arrive, I inspected my basket of laundry in the hopes of prevent my childhood nightmare from coming to life. No pants in this basket, God damn it. There were only shirts, but at least I had been lucky enough to grab one of my favorites. I put it on and waited, because, really, what else was I going to do at that point?

And that’s why, when the first truck rolled up, they were greeted by the strange spectacle of a young man without pants standing in the rain watching his house burn as he held a dog by the collar in one hand and a basket of laundry in the other.

My involvement in the story ends here. Somebody gave me some pants to wear. My parents showed up. I sat in the fire truck and wondered what it would be like to be dead. For some reason, I found myself wondering if it would be weird. It seemed weird to me, that I might not be immortal, that I might not live forever.

Even now, years later, when I reflect on that moment, it makes me shiver, to imagine a world in which I had not been quite as fast as I had been, that one time.