And best of all – nobody got hurt!<\/p>\n
It was 2 a.m. and I was just drifting off to sleep when I was jolted awake by the shrill beeping of a smoke alarm. It was so loud that I was sure it was in my own apartment (which is pretty small) – so I got out of bed, staggered around in the darkness, blind for a moment … got the glasses on … turned on lights … and realized that it WASN’T in my apartment, it was out in the hall.<\/p>\n
The thing was LOUD, man.<\/p>\n
I normally sleep so deeply that you have to shout directly into my ear to get me up.<\/p>\n
But this alarm pierced through.<\/p>\n
So I go out into the hallway. It is 2 am. The smoke alarm is BLARING. But there is no smell of smoke, or anything burning.<\/p>\n
Others throughout the building were also woken up by the smoke alarm (everyone except the super who basically HID IN HIS APARTMENT). We had all been woken up. We all stood around, wondering what to do. We were all in our pajamas.<\/p>\n
I went down into the cellar to see if anything was burning … nothing. I knocked on the door of the super’s apartment. No answer. I knew he was in there!<\/p>\n
The noise was deafening. People were milling about, talking, laughing. I met people I had never met before.<\/p>\n
We decided, after having a pajama-clad conference, that we should call 911.<\/p>\n
So I went back into my apartment and called 911. Gave the address, told them it wasn’t an emergency, but there was a smoke alarm going off, and it should be checked out.<\/p>\n
2 cops showed up in, no lie, 5 minutes. They had called the fire department.<\/p>\n
The super still had not shown his face.<\/p>\n
I stood in the lobby, chatting with the cops. I was in my pajamas, with my crazy sleepy hair, and my chunky glasses, and my slippers. Somehow, we started talking about Eminem’s new album, and how psyched we were for it. We became dear friends in about 25 seconds.<\/p>\n
But here comes the fantasy part.<\/p>\n
Within 10 minutes, 2 fire trucks pulled up, and we were then OVERRUN WITH FIREMEN. Firemen were IN MY APARTMENT, firemen were tramping up and down the stairwells, firemen were going down into the basement, firemen were checking the fuse boxes, firemen were calling up and down the stairs to each other … They were in their black firemen gear with the neon stripes, they had the hats, the axes … there were probably 15 of them.<\/p>\n
I have never had so much fun in my entire life.<\/p>\n
I was in my pajamas.<\/p>\n
But I was in my glory.<\/b><\/p>\n
I showed the firemen around. I showed them the problematic smoke alarm. I openly bitched about the super. I let them into my apartment. Since this obviously wasn’t a burning building or any kind of life-threatening moment, the firemen were pretty chilled out. They all lolled about in my kitchen.<\/p>\n
One of them suddenly looked up from his work and said, “Who here is wearing ‘Sierra’?”<\/p>\n
I’m still laughing about that. I was the only girl, standing there with five firemen and he has to ask who here is wearing Sierra?<\/p>\n
I said, “God, I’m sorry. It’s obviously me. Is it too strong?”<\/p>\n
“Oh, no, no. Are you kiddin’ me? I love ‘Sierra’! It brings back great memories …” It felt like he could have launched into some nostalgic monologue about ‘Sierra’ and what it meant to him emotionally.<\/p>\n
And yet he was a guy in FULL FIREMAN GEAR, standing on a CHAIR in my hallway.<\/p>\n
I felt like I suddenly had 15 boyfriends.<\/p>\n
There were so many firemen that many of them didn’t have much to do. So a couple of the tenants stood outside in the freezing night, shooting the breeze with them. It was totally normal that I was in my pajamas and they were in gigantic industrial outfits. <\/p>\n
The “battalion chief” was there – a big beefy guy – and he took care of things. They located the issue (a faulty smoke alarm … this took about 20 minutes of fiddling to figure out what the problem was) – they took down the name of the super – they told us everything would be fine, but to let the landlord know such and such …<\/p>\n
And then … just as quickly as they had arrived … they all tromped away.<\/p>\n
I miss them already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
And best of all – nobody got hurt! It was 2 a.m. and I was just drifting off to sleep when I was jolted awake by the shrill beeping of a smoke alarm. It was so loud that I was … Continue reading