Tiny Man Loved Fire...

It’s Midnight Friday, now, Saturday. I’m bored and lonely and running out of ideas. Ever have moments when you actually start to believe you have absolutely nothing to say?

Yesterday I was awoken at 4am by the dying battery in my smoke alarm. I absolutely panicked. It was going slow, so I was trying to figure out if that meant the battery was dying or if it was some sort of warning that there was a fire, but it was really small right now. Maybe it needed to build up, as if it only beeped a little when there was a little smoke instead of beeping like mad for a raging inferno. So, at 4am I was sitting on my couch after having changed the battery (and trying to regain my hearing) debating whether or not my smoking might set off a new battery. Yes, these are the thoughts I have. I am special.

See I freaked cos I am sooo afraid of fire. This is strange for a smoker who loves to play with fire. I’m just terrified by the idea of burning to death, my cats burning to death and my entire life becoming a pile of ashes. I have no upstairs or next-door neighbor in my building so there would be no one to pull the fire alarm if the ever so inefficient electrical heating system somehow failed, or if the frat attack that used to live upstairs had fucked up some electrical cord on an important appliance. So I sat on my couch and stared at the stupid thing and waited for it to beep. It didn’t.

I was so hopped up on adrenalin that when I tried to fall back asleep I couldn’t. So, I laid there wondering if I just broke the smoke detector and now it wouldn’t work at all. I thought about pushing the tester button, but figured that considering the low quality of soundproofing in this building, that pushing it might wake up my neighbors. When I say low quality soundproofing what I actually mean is no soundproofing (the people who live over the apartment next to mine sound like they might as well live above me). So, I didn’t push the button (when I put the new battery in it did blare directly in my ear so I figured I’d be safe for the night).

I laid there and all that went through my head was: fuck, tomorrow’s gonna suck at work. See, I’m still in training. My boss has off on Fridays so I can’t actually work on case work cos he isn’t there to supervise. I mean I can work on it, but I can’t get anything actually finished cos he has to look over everything. So we sit around on Fridays and try to look busy by reading our manuals or catching up on the latent print boards and crap. This is hard enough to do when I have had a full night’s sleep. It’s nearly impossible when I haven’t slept. I debated calling in sick. But I can’t be that deceptive. Instead at some point I fell asleep.

What’s the lesson in all of this? Earlier on Thursday I looked at the damn smoke detector and thought, “Wow, I should change the battery in that. I’ll check it tomorrow.” Mind you this is something I’ve been telling myself since like day-light savings time kicked in. The lesson is this: change the fucking battery so it doesn’t wake you up in the middle of the night and fuck up your whole day. The only other thing I learned was that I can be confident that in the event that thing goes off for real, I will wake up. Yay for me.