01 October 2006
♥ no. only red.
There are few things in life about which my opinion fluctuates so violently as it does of fire drills. Sometimes they are a godsend; i.e. freshman year, when the frigid mid-January temperatures felt positively balmy compared to Zamboni's classroom. On the other hand, they can be a complete pain; i.e. when the newspaper needs to get done and you get back to class and the yearbook girls have taken over the publications room with their very perfumed little skinny blonde selves and you don't want to touch anything because they're spewing mindless drivel all over it. (This is an entirely hypothetical situation, of course.)
Sometimes, though, it's not a drill at all. This happened last week, and twenty minutes after the entire student body and faculty of LHS had made its way outside, people were starting to get a little antsy. A couple of especially rebellious upperclassmen were scoping out the Spanish teachers guarding the door--thinking maybe we could take them--when the firetrucks showed up.
That shut everybody up, because firetrucks mean someone actually pulled the alarm, which means a) there's a real fire and our car keys are getting all burninated and we're never going home, b) some dumb kid pulled the alarm for no reason which means they have invisible ink on their hands which means we have to sit around and wait for over a thousand kids to stick their hands under a black light, or c) there's some kind of chemical spill on the science floor and we're all going to die. None of these sounded especially appealing.
I don't actually know why we were all out there, because I pretty much lost all ability to rationalize when the fire trucks pulled up.
Do you know why? Because the firetrucks were yellow.
Yellow.
If I was in a burning building and they showed up to rescue me in a yellow firetruck, I would freak. How would I know these were trained professionals? It would be like getting pulled over by an unmarked police car! I'd lean out the window and be like, "Now listen here, you take that big noisy yellow monstrosity on back to the fire station and you come back here with a nice red one! I'm not jumping out of this damn building till I see some red out there!"
No. No. Never yellow. Only red. There is a crayon called "Fire Engine Red." Red is the fire engine color. No other color is suitable for firetrucks. If they change the firetruck color, the world will go spinning out of control and fly into the sun. I'm surprised we've all survived this long, with all these freakish fire engines running around. What's next? Are they going to replace dalmations with schnauzers and that fire-retardant white stuff with lime jello? Are firehouses going to have ladders instead of those cool poles? Will firefighters wear a trenchcoat and a fez instead of the yellow suit and groovy firefighter hat? Don't you see how wrong this is?!
Moral of the story: don't play with matches, because when you set your house on fire, there will be nothing there to save you except the fire engine equivalent of a circus freak and a bunch of yippy little terriers.
Sometimes, though, it's not a drill at all. This happened last week, and twenty minutes after the entire student body and faculty of LHS had made its way outside, people were starting to get a little antsy. A couple of especially rebellious upperclassmen were scoping out the Spanish teachers guarding the door--thinking maybe we could take them--when the firetrucks showed up.
That shut everybody up, because firetrucks mean someone actually pulled the alarm, which means a) there's a real fire and our car keys are getting all burninated and we're never going home, b) some dumb kid pulled the alarm for no reason which means they have invisible ink on their hands which means we have to sit around and wait for over a thousand kids to stick their hands under a black light, or c) there's some kind of chemical spill on the science floor and we're all going to die. None of these sounded especially appealing.
I don't actually know why we were all out there, because I pretty much lost all ability to rationalize when the fire trucks pulled up.
Do you know why? Because the firetrucks were yellow.
Yellow.
If I was in a burning building and they showed up to rescue me in a yellow firetruck, I would freak. How would I know these were trained professionals? It would be like getting pulled over by an unmarked police car! I'd lean out the window and be like, "Now listen here, you take that big noisy yellow monstrosity on back to the fire station and you come back here with a nice red one! I'm not jumping out of this damn building till I see some red out there!"
No. No. Never yellow. Only red. There is a crayon called "Fire Engine Red." Red is the fire engine color. No other color is suitable for firetrucks. If they change the firetruck color, the world will go spinning out of control and fly into the sun. I'm surprised we've all survived this long, with all these freakish fire engines running around. What's next? Are they going to replace dalmations with schnauzers and that fire-retardant white stuff with lime jello? Are firehouses going to have ladders instead of those cool poles? Will firefighters wear a trenchcoat and a fez instead of the yellow suit and groovy firefighter hat? Don't you see how wrong this is?!
Moral of the story: don't play with matches, because when you set your house on fire, there will be nothing there to save you except the fire engine equivalent of a circus freak and a bunch of yippy little terriers.
10/01/2006
