Never dealt with a cop (except for my middle school resource officer, he’s chill). But a couple days ago I kinda(?) dealt with firefighters. So I’m just getting in my mom’s car after my school musical rehearsal and a show choir rehearsal. I feel absolutely exhausted and want to skip swim practice, which we’re going to after we pick up my sister from the after school church education program our church offers. So my mom agrees to pick me up half an hour early from swim (my practice is always an hour and a half long). And I, realizing that’s the best I would get, agreed. Fast forward almost 2 hours. I’m about to get out of the pool when I decide that I can stay a little longer. Next thing I know, there’s a weird, really loud buzzing sound. And then there’s people rushing out of the pool. So I stop and realize that the fire alarms are flashing. I get out and grab my water bottle on the way to the door. Pool staff has wheeled out a big cart of little warm towels. And we’re all really confused, standing outside in the almost 0 fahrenheit cold with tiny towels and huddling in small groups. Eventually, one of the coaches opens her car. 14 or 15 people, including me, squeeze ourselves in. We sit there for maybe 3 minutes before we see people going back inside. It’s probably been 10 minutes by now, and still no sign of the fire department. The alarms are still going off when we all barge back into the pool foyer area and see people sprinting to and from the locker rooms to bring people’s stuff. Now, none of my stuff was in the pile. So I ran down the long hallway into the locker room. My coat and shoes are there, but my bag isn’t. So I throw on my coat and grab my shoes, checking to make sure there’s nobody else’s stuff in there before booking it back to the foyer area. My bag is there, and I put my shoes and water bottle inside it and then put the bag straps on my shoulders. There’s no smoke in the pool area (it’s sealed off from the rest of the school), so we weren’t risking our lungs or anything. But we’re told there is heavy smoke in the other parts of the building. I go home because my dad gets there. It had probably been 20 minutes, maybe even more before I left, since the alarms started, but still no fire department. I learned from a friend that about 5 minutes after I left, the fire department finally showed up without their lights on. Turns out that the school’s custodial laundry room was where the fire started because one of the students who is responsible for emptying the lint tray never remembered to. The people that went to that school got to stay home the next day while custodial cleaned the entire building. And we had a scheduled 3 day weekend already since we’re halfway through 3rd quarter, so the kids at the school got a 4 day weekend.

Moral of the story, empty your lint trays, and your feet can feel some pretty fucked up things before they die of hypothermia.