FIRE!!!!

A little over a year ago, I used to live up in the dorms of New Heritage. One day, my roommates and I stayed up late having a root beer float party with our FHE brothers. I remember going to bed at roughly 2am.

Three hours later...

The fire alarm went off. Now, in these dorms, it's not like a normal house fire alarm that just beeps loudly. It's more like this excessively loud screeching noise, with flashing lights, and really your motivation to get out of the building comes from the desire to get away from the loudest noise ever so your ears will stop hurting.

Having only been asleep for three hours, this is the groggy process by which I came to the conclusion that I needed to leave the building.

Yes, it was real life- my roommate responded. In not-real life, Jane wouldn't have been there. Still half asleep, I jumped out of bed to escape from the fire! Fighting the blood-rush and dizziness and still-asleepyness, I quickly assessed the situation:

1) The fire alarm was going off and making me go deaf.

2) This either meant there was a fire, or it was a false alarm entirely.

3) If it was a false alarm, wouldn't they have shut it off by now?

4) It is probably a fire.

5) This could be the last time I ever see any of my possessions.

Following this line of logic, I grabbed my most important/expensive belongings, and thought ahead for the future just in case I wouldn't ever be coming back.

Not my keys, not my wallet, not my ID... My priorities were slightly askew in this crazy real-life dream. All of these things were grabbed quickly, while all thoughts were processed slowly. 

My roommate and I ran into our other roommates on the way out of the apartment. We ran by the elevator, and remembered that elevators are not safe in fires! So instead we ran down the stairs, and outside.

There we regrouped with our friends. The screeching alarm was barely quieter outside the building. I'm literally surprised it didn't wake up all of Provo. We stood around outside shivering for about an hour while the fire department came and checked out the building, which did not burn down. In any way. Because apparently, the fire alarm is also hooked up to leaky pipes, and what happened was that a pipe exploded in the very stair well that Jane and I had run down. Not that we could tell, there was no water there when we used it, but we heard stories. They finally let us go inside and go back to bed. For some reason the fire alarm stayed on outside for a long time. When I woke up in the morning, I had to make sure it wasn't a dream again by asking my roommates if the same dream happened to them. 

And that is the story of the "fire" that I was in.