Don't Play With Fire

It seems to me that much of what we teach our children about fire safety is pretty much all for naught.  Fire drills come quickly to mind.  How many fire drills have you been in in your life?  Probably quite a few if you’ve been to any sort of public school.  The principal would ring the bell and everyone would form little neat lines and then walk outside for a head count.  This doesn’t show reality at all.  In reality, with backdrafts and falling beams of wood, the children would go freak-out crazy and most likely catch on fire to become running, pre-teen firebombs.  But what happens after a lifetime of drills?  A lifetime of walking out of a building slowly to make sure everyone is safe?  What happens when you’re an adult and a real fire begins?  You walk slowly out of a building, not scared at all.  That’s not a good thing.  Being a little scared makes you quick to react, quick to want to run out of a building instead of walking down a flight of stairs commenting on how the fire smells like a birthday cake.  All of the years of drilling have made people dense to fire.  They would rather look at the fire than make sure they’re safe from it.  If public schools would have done away with drills, then people would be making it out of buildings a lot faster.  There might be a little more chaos on the way out, but Darwin showed us that those who are strongest will survive; you have to have your eye on the prize.  So stop being lazy in fires, folks.  Push smaller people out of the way if you have to.  Last one out is a rotten egg…that’s on fire.