Morning Interruption

A few minutes ago Lance came walking into my office to ask if I heard the fire alarm ringing in the hallway. To be truthful, I was focused in on my work project and, although I heard a buzzing in the background, I thought it was a power drill or a vacuum and didn’t pay any attention to it. Later I told Lance, “Thank you for potentially saving my life.” Can’t you just see me, being the Space Cadet that I am, sitting at my desk with flames engulfing the building around me, totally unaware of it all? Scary, eh?

Soon we were descending the staircase, along with all the other building occupants, unsure if the ringing in our ears was the result of a drill or the real thing.

Most of the people who work in my building are part of the radical left-wing conspiracy. As I stood on the sidewalk outside our building, I instantly identified the Sierra Club folks. It wasn’t hard. All I had to do was look for the Birkenstocks. (Would a serious environmentalist dare wear anything else?) One of them had a green shirt with a peace symbol. Another guy had a tan shirt with a forest of chopped-down trees that said, “Once you’ve killed them, they’ll never live again.” Very astute observation, I thought to myself. Typically when you kill something, it never comes back to life. Astounding logic. Very deep, too.

Soon the entire Sacramento County fire department showed up (or so it seemed). We were all rather impressed at their speedy service. At this point we still thought all of the hullabaloo was a routine drill. Later we found out that, actually, it was a false alarm.

Fortunately, during the wait, Lance kept us all entertained with his jokes and witticisms. He relayed some interesting facts about the great Chicago Fire and how Chicago’s state-of-the-art water pump (used expressly to combat fires) was, if you can believe it, made out of flammable materials and burned down instantly! Hmmm . . .