Picture it, Spring 1997 and I am in our first house in Tooele. It was the cutest little 2 bedroom brick (okay cinder block) home. I was pregnant with Kelton and was due in just a few weeks. I was getting ready for work one day and while I was in the shower I could smell smoke. I started looking from my belly to the little bathroom window that was there in the shower. I started to panic, I didn't know where the fire was and the smell of smoke was getting stronger. The more I looked at myself and the window I knew there was no way I could fit through the window, I was a beached whale who was waiting for Green Peace to show up any day to figure out how a whale had got this far inland. I soon started to picture myself squeezing through the window and being stuck in my backyard naked and trying to hide behind some of our bushes. There was no way I was actually going to do that, there were spiders and bugs out there. What would I have done once the firefighters got there? I couldn't have just stood up naked to announce that I had crawled through the window and had been hiding outside. I couldn't afford the therapy those brave men would have needed if I had done that to them. I thought maybe I could yell and get their attention from my hiding place to let them know that I was there and needed a blanket to I could cover up and come out.
I finally calmed down and hoped that since I was in the shower wet that if the fire was bad enough I could at least stay wet and hopefully not get burned. After sitting there for what felt like forever, I finally got enough courage to turn off the water and try feeling the door to see if it was hot. The door was cool and the smoke smell had seemed to have lessened a little. I attempted to wrap myself in a towel and check out the house and find where the fire was. I couldn't find anything and so I decided to call my boss and let him know that I thought there was a fire in my home and that I was going to be late. Our conversation went something like this:
boss: why are you calling me, you need to call 911!
me: I am going to call 911 but I needed to let you know that I'm having problems this morning and I will be late.
boss: I don't care about you being late, just call 911!!!
In the wall in front of me I heard a pop, sizzle, sizzle, pop. I dropped to the floor and landed flat on my stomach (sorry Kelton) and shouted into the phone, "Oh Shit!!!!!!"
At this point my sweet boss who I am sure has never sworn ever in his life hung up on me so I would call 911. Mind you that at this point all I had gotten on was some underwear, so while I was on the phone with the 911 operator I was frantically trying to get dressed.
By this point I am completely frazzled and wondering if my dropping to the floor on top of my baby is going to cause him any brain damage. I am waiting for the calvary to show up and save me and make sure that the fire in the wall was out. After the trauma of thinking I was going to have to shove my pregnant body out a little window and then having my wall sound like Rice Krispies, do you know what kind of calvary came to my aid? I got some fire Marshall in an old Plymouth car. No hook and ladder truck, no water truck, not even the little fire EMT truck.
What were my tax dollars paying for? I had a fire in my wall and all I got was a car with one fire Marshall to come check it out! It reminds me of the t-shirts that were so popular in the 80's that said "Grandma and Grandpa went to Las Vegas and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" The fire Marshall should have brought one of those with him for me. It could have said, "I had an electrical fire in my wall and all though I was completely traumatized all I got was one firefighter in a car and this lousy t-shirt."
I live near one of the fire stations in West Jordan now and I hear them drive by all time. I think they bring out the entire force for every call they receive and now that I'm older I know more about how much it costs them to drive those big fire trucks around. It has been 14 years and I am still a little upset that when I called for help and I had a fire I only got some old car and one fire fighter. What if it had caused me to go into pre-term labor or something else more serious would have happened instead of just my little fire? I'm pretty sure I would have gotten the response that feel I should have gotten. In fact I know I would have because I lived by a lot of older people and every time one of them had a heart attack or a fall the whole volunteer fire department would show up.
Kenny's Grandma has a little sign in her Kitchen that says,
"when God closes a door he always opens a window."
On that day, someone forgot to take into account that I was way big pregnant and the window was too small for my butt!
No comments:
Post a Comment