Fire, Fire, Fire. Fire in my Brain.

I woke up this morning with no alarm.  Thankfully I startled myself awake about ten minutes before I usually get up.  I showered and when I returned to my room, I was confronted with the unmistakable odor of a feline that had decided to declare something as 'His'.

My winter coat that, in a moment of sheer and utter laziness, I had dropped on the floor just behind my bedroom door upon entering the house the previous evening.  Lovely.  That will teach me to be more fastidious.

The fire alarm went off while at work today.  I promptly evacuated, and to clarify I mean that I left the building, not that I shat my pants.  Thanks, Vicky, for making sure I am more careful about that particular word in the future.

As I left I glanced at my wallet on my desk but decided to leave it.  I did grab my coat, as why escape a potentially burning building, only to die of exposure to the cold.  This is Canada, after all.  Always thinking.

As I stood in the parking lot with three out of my roughly 15 to 20 co-workers, along with a handful of Tim Horton's employees, I wondered what all of our elementary school teachers would think of this gross lack of respect for the fire bell.  In the time it took our staff to wander their way out, half of us could have been dead.

Source

I entertained the fantasy that if the building was indeed about to burn to the ground with my wallet and all identification within, I could jump in my car and assume a new identity in a new place.  I could be a dancer, or a surly truckstop waitress, or join a carnival.  I could buy a farm and grow tomatoes and sell pie at the side of the road.  I'd send for the children and they could join me.  We'd live in relative obscurity, off the grid.  Maybe open a small restaurant.  The cats would be left the little dollhouse, free to leave their smellieness where-ever they please.

Like Edward Norton's character in the 25th hour, just drive.  "Nothing at all for miles around"  Like Monty Brogan in that fantastic ending, that ending that you are never quite sure is the actual ending or just a work of Monty's imagination.  Like that, but without all the drug charges and such.

There was no fire.  I returned to my desk.  My wallet was there, my identity safely tucked inside each of the little slits meant to hold licenses, credit cards, rewards cards.  Life goes on as usual.

Sometimes, my mind wanders.