In Which We Practice Preparedness

Every so often I worry about writing a story that is just too much of a “had to be there” kind of tale. The fear is mainly because I've been told I'm the king of had-to-be-there stories. However since this website is 95%* me telling you things because you can't be here I wouldn't be doing my job if I wasn't trying**. So since we're at it we might as well swing for the fences and go for broke. This week you're not going to get just one story, you're going to get two. Tune in tomorrow for the second one.

*The rest is 4% random pop-culture references and 1% passionate pleas for donations. Oh, who am I kidding. Its like 45% pop-culture references, 38% ramblings, and 17% head-scratching nonsense.

**Writing here is not my “job”, if I had a “job”, or if I considered it “writing”, or “trying”, hypothetically.

The first story I've been kicking around for a month or two waiting find some way to pair it as I don't feel its strong enough as a stand-alone story. By itself it's OK, but it really needs to be surrounded by other things or it has no real importance. Like an actor in an ensemble piece. Or salad.

This particular story takes place the night before we hosted a wedding reception at the orphanage. Victor had called all the kids into a meeting so we could talk about being on good behavior and dole out some jobs that would need to be taken care of the next day.

The thing about Victor is he is this weird, almost unnatural combination of personality traits. If there was a spectrum of attention span with one extreme being O.C.D. (obsessive and detail oriented) and the other extreme being A.D.D. (jumpy and unfocused) Victor would be 50% of each. But you wouldn't put a mark in the middle of the spectrum as a balance. You would put half a mark each on the the two extreme edges of the spectrum. Victor can be ridiculously detail-oriented but with a dangerously sharp fall-off in attention span.

That night in the meeting Victor just went around the room to the older kids handing out tasks. Saying things like, “You two need be at the gate telling cars where to park. Don't let them park in any spot they want---keep them orderly. You next three are in charge of water. Make sure we don't run out of drinking water and keep refilling the cooler. You two to stay in the dorms as security and make sure people don't wander in and start taking things.”

Then Victor turned to me and said, in English, “TJ, during the night you need to do a fire drill. Just go to the dorm in the middle of the night and blow a whistle and tell everybody to run because the dorm is on fire and see what happens.” Without skipping a beat he then went on to the next person and made them charge of checking the toilet paper supply throughout the next day. Some how, fire drills managed to jump into his frame of mind in being prepared for a wedding reception. Given my history with fire, it doesn't seem like a bad idea.

In case of emergency, break...something. What was it? Break down, break wind, breakfast, break glas----I remember: break dance. It's OK. Everything's gonna be fine.

Unfortunately, I am never doing an unplanned, unannounced fire drill. I really really really want to, but only because I think it would secretly turn into spontaneous hilarity (just like this). But something about running into a crowded movie theater and yelling “fire” sounds a little too much like RUNNING INTO A MOVIE THEATER AND YELLING FIRE. It will also turn me into the boy who cried wolf. Or man who cried fire. Or firewolves.

The internet search told me that there's no such thing as a firewolf, and the only pictures that came up were of actual wolves on fire. Here's a cute wolf puppy instead.

rawr.

When I did try to talk to the boys about fire safety I was quickly reminded by a group of boys that, "We don't need to worry about that. Most people here sleep so heavily that the fire will pass and they won't even wake up. They'll be fine." The next talk I had with the boys was about how fire works.