Ricky’s Page

The inlaws were in town for Easter, Ellen, Dave and Holly.  All six of us (Heather, Elise and myself included) were slumbering soundly when the fire alarm whent off in our building nearing five am.  Initially Heather thought it was the humidifier grinding for some reason.  (the funny things you think when you are mostly asleep)  But it was the building fire alarm (not the one in our apartment).  I was still slowly coming out of sleep while she was opening the hallway door and a guy out there said “it’s a false alarm!”  So naturally I threw on some shoes and went out to investigate.  There were people walking around in a confused state.  The alarm was so loud on our top floor that you couldn’t really talk with anybody.  Immediately I smelled smoke though.  So I headed down stairs and out the door where a little huddle of confused, tired and cold people were standing and waiting as if it were a school fire drill.  There was no consensus as to whether it was false or not.  The smell of smoke was in the hall, and nobody really knew where it was coming from.  One guy was very concerned about whether or not every person in the building was awake and getting out.  Another guy said “I heard the alarm, I smelled smoke, and I was out!”  A mother and her little five year old son stood there looking confused, while the little boy stood shivvering with the heels of his little shoes folded beneath his heals, not having enough time to have put them on properly.  Our neighbor Mark, a young history teacher who lives across the hallway from us stood with a halfway amused and halfway annoyed lookon his face in his hooded sweatshirt  and hands in his pockets and calmly said “I was sleeping so soundly.”  Heather had already called our maintenance guy and he was on his way, and I was pondering “should we act like our building is about to burn down or not?  Smoke, alarm, and nobody knows why?”    Finally to dispell the confusion a lady popped her door open on the second floor and announced she was cooking her easter dinner (at 5 am…wow!) and she burned it (boy she must have really burned it!).  A wave of relief settled over the crowd as everybody filed back into their apartments while Pete, the maintenance man sped into the parking lot around 55 mph.  He disappeared inside and in a few moments the obstreporously loud fire alarm ceassed.  I explained the proceedings to everyone inside and we got everyone back to bed.  Amazingly the only one who didn’t wake up in our apartment was Elise, truly sleeping like a baby.  I found humor in the irony of the whole situations and the broad range of reactions from everybody.  As I headed back to bed I wondered (since it was Easter morning) whether the stone was rolled away and Jesus already out of the grave or not at the same time on that first easter morning.