Now this is funny. As my readers will know, we are moving soon. As a result of the move, we are going through The Purge, trying to get rid of things we won’t need. Well, we had (note the tense) a big padded recliner that we wouldn’t have space for in our new apartment. So we decided to put it out on the street with a “free” sign on it, hoping that we could help someone out with it.
Well, little did we know that the person we helped would be a pyromaniac.
Last night, at about 2:30am, we were awakened by someone repeatedly ringing our doorbell. I got up to see lots of bright red and blue flashing lights coming in our window. And I could smell smoke. I opened the door to see a fireman standing there.
“Is this your chair?” he asked.
I was a bit disoriented, and my natural suspicion of authority figures kicked in.
“Ummm, yeah.”
“Has this chair,” the fireman asked, “been sitting out here for long?”
“Yeah, we’re moving, so we put it out with a ‘free chair’ sign on it, hoping someone would take it.”
I looked over to where the chair was, and saw a steaming, smoldering, blackened pile of charred wood and metal.
“What, someone torched the chair?”
“Yes.” the fireman said. “I just wanted to make sure that there wasn’t also a fire inside the building.”
“No, no fires in here. Wait, you said someone torched my chair.”
“That’s right,” he said. “So everything is OK in here? This chair has been sitting outside for a while now?”
“Yes, since early this afternoon.”
“OK then. Have a good night.”
“Ummm, yeah.”
I’d have to say that this ranks 2nd on my list of most disorienting awakenings in my life. Needless to say, I’ve been quite sensitive to an abundance of fire energy for the past 10 hours… it’s going to be an interesting day at AAA, that’s for sure…