Speaking of Fire

Sometime during my freshman year at college somebody in our dorm decided to set some fires.

Most of the time they were set in the central trash bins for the floor and in the middle of the night. Our dorm had ten floors.

I can't remember how many times this happened, but I do remember many sleepless nights from evacuations and standing outside in the nighttime cold.

Fires were set on every floor - every floor except mine and maybe one other.

The only reason there weren't any fires on our floor was because we started a fire watch. Each night, all night, two people were awake for "fire shifts" in the hall of our floor.

This was a picture I took while on one of my shifts. I had my stereo and mini speakers set up to keep me awake and motivated. If you look close, you'll see an envelope, with fire on it, on the top of my stereo.

With a couple of random hours in the middle of each night, you never knew what you were going to produce.

- b