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Travis rings happily out of the cheap speaker, "Why does it always rain on me?" as I swim through the smoke of the PC room. Later, I was in the middle of an exotic dream where I was suspected of fraternizing with the enemy by stealing tasty baked goods from an Iraqi house across the street when I was rudely awoken by someone screaming and furiously pounding on our apartment door. Alarmed out of my wits, I popped out of bed and slowly opened the door, expecting to see a drunk Korean woman. I saw no one and called out, "Yobo say oh?" (hello?). Then the same screaming voice called out again, this time from Laura's room (another teacher and next-door neighbor). "My television's on fire!," she yelled. I dashed into her apartment, and through thick smoke my blurry eyes saw flames licking up the corner of the room. My first thought was, "Oh, no. It's caught the walls already!" Instantly my lungs burned from toxic plastic smoke. Without thinking, I jumped over to the far end of the apartment to the sink. Laura met me there and together, with all four of our hands in a panicked tangle, we made no progress at getting water out of the faucet. Thinking quickly, I abandoned plan A and instead snatched a half-full tea kettle from off the stove. I ran over to the blazing television and poured the kettle's contents into the gaping hole from which the largest flames were burning. The flames seemed to laugh at my feeble attempt and blew more toxic plastic smoke in my face. Luckily, however, I saw that the flames had not reached the wall, but were restrained to just the TV. I ran back to the sink. By now Laura had remembered how to turn the water on, and quickly filling the kettle, I ran back and dumped its contents back into the hole. After seven or eight trips, I managed to subdue the flame to only smoke, and after another three kettles full, even the smoke stopped. By now, Celeste had wandered in and had turned on the light. We all stood there looking at each other through the gray smoke in amazement, relief, and horror. The horror was my fault-- I was standing in my underwear, my face black from smoke, and squinting (my glasses were still nestled in their case next to my bed). Celeste and I began to open windows and blow smoke out of the apartment. Once the smoke began to dissipate, we started to mop up the small lake I had created on Laura's floor with my dozen or so trips to the faucet. Paralyzed by shock, Laura stood rigid and furrowed her brow as she toweled the smoke residue from off the keys of her rented piano-- plink, plink, plink. I picked up the melted remains of Laura's television and carried it outside where it still sits--a week later--next to all our other abandoned furniture, true to form. The cause of the fire is still a bit of a mystery. Indeed, it wouldn't surprise us if the TV up and lit itself on fire--stranger things have happened to us here. In fact, while we were testing out a different TV to see if it was appropriate for our room, we decided it probably wasn't on the basis that when we plugged it in, sparks and small flames began to jump around inside the TV. "I guess it's one of them new gas TVs." The next day, as we walked by the charred remains of Laura's TV, we did notice candle wax on the face of it, an indication that she probably left a candle burning. The next day, all of the foreign teachers discussed the topic ad nauseam and decided that we were all extremely lucky that Laura had woken up when her television decided to ignite. Se, a dangerously deep sleeper, admitted that the entire apartment building would have burned down before he woke up had it been his television. We were all horrified to realize that none of us had smoke alarms, nor fire extinguishers in our apartments, compounded by the fact that we all have only one exit to our apartments, as our windows are all barred. This began an investigation of fire extinguishers. Se gathered a few dusty extinguishers from the school. We figured that they hadn't been touched since the school was opened, eight years ago. We decided to test one to see if it worked. Outside, Se removed the safety device and tried to squeeze the handle. Nothing. I offered a supplementary squeeze, to which the extinguisher immediately responded with a copious and uncontrollable flow of pink, fire-retardant dust. Startled, I tried to make it stop. I quickly realized that unless I abandoned said extinguisher, the dust would put me out. I let go of the handle, pointed the hose down, and ran away like a scared kitten, leaving extinguisher gushing as it emptied its contents. " I guess that one works. . .worked." Now, in addition to the fire smoke and plastic air in the apartments, we had pink gasses and foam at the school. "Why does it always rain on me . . ." Why Does It Always Rain On Me--Scottro [2003-04-06]
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