Some quick background info for those of you in the "don't know." I've been living with my brothers for the past ten months. At this time last year my two friends who I have been living with for the last eight years or so were both in the process of getting engaged and moving in with the fiancees/girlfriends. I did not really want to look for new roommates but at the same time our apartment was pretty sweet and I did not want to give it up yet. At about the same time, my younger brothers decided to start their post college lives by moving to San Francisco. When the arrived in San Francisco they both found jobs pretty quickly, but were having difficulty finding an apartment. So since I had two roommates moving out and two brothers moving to San Francisco, it just made sense that my brothers move in with me. And honestly it has been pretty enjoyful so far. Yes, we still fight over the last pinwheel like we did twenty years ago, but so far no broken windows, no one has hosed down the living room yet (although there was an iced tea incident that was eerily similar a couple of weekends ago), and most importantly no one has come away from any disagreements with bruises inside the canal of their ear.
Fast forward to this past Sunday. It is around 6 PM. The three of us have been in the living room for about twenty minutes watching the Sunday night football game. There's even a lasagna in the over that's going to be ready for us in about thirty minutes. As you can tell we're about to settle into a nice relaxing evening. The windows in the living room were open because when the stove was heated for the lasagna there was something in the over burning off and the place got a little smokey and the smoke detectors went off so we needed to open the windows to get the smoke out. At this point in the evening the smoke was long gone so Aaron gets off the couch to shut the windows because he was getting a little chilly. While he's up, Aaron figures he'll take a leak. Aaron's bedroom is the loft, so it is on the top floor of our place, a staircase above the living room. He's got his own deck and bathroom, if he ever meets a girl she'll be thoroughly impressed. Anyways, Aaron gets about six stairs up, says "holy sh*t," Ross and I look at him, and by stair eight he says "My room's on fire, get me some water." At this point Ross and I look at him like he's speaking Swahili, and he gives us the most serious look back and says "Get me some buckets!" and sprints up the stairs.
At this point I'm fairly curious as to what's going on so I'm up off the couch and peaking up Aaron's staircase. I see what looks like a candle flickering in his bathroom and by the time I am two steps up on the staircase I can see that his bathroom is in fact on fire. Ross sees me sprint towards the kitchen and follows me. We both grab a a pan and turn on the faucet to start filling them with water. Little do I know that at this point Ross is panicking and saying to himself "Is there any way this is not my fault?" More on that later. The water pressure in out kitchen is horrendous. And by horrendous, I mean it would take about 45 seconds to fill a little pan you would use to make a box of macaroni and cheese. I realize this is not going to work so I tell Ross we should go upstairs and use the faucet outside on Aaron's deck, which has awesome pressure because it is one you would hook a garden house to. I sprint towards Aaron's stairs with a quarter filled pan of water, slip going around the corner, fall, spill my water all over the wall, slam my elbow into the concrete floor, get up, sprint up the stairs, run past the burning bathroom, end up outside on the deck, fill my bucket, and head back towards the bathroom. By the time I get to the bathroom Aaron has the fire out and my water is not needed. Aaron, who pretty much is the best at all practical and every day tasks out of almost anyone I know, rivaling my father at this point, some how had the presence of mind to soak one of his towels in the shower and then use that to smother the fire. And by fire I mean half of his plastic trash can was completely missing, the other half was completely charred, and the toilet paper had caught on fire on the roll. Also the wall was charred and starting to burn a little bit. At this point not only were our smoke detectors going off, but the main fire alarms throughout the building were going off.
So how did this all start, you're probably wondering. Once Aaron had the fire out we were actually having a pretty good laugh about the whole thing. I mean, five or ten more minutes of us not noticing could have been a disaster. What if we would have gone out? We got pretty lucky. Apparently, about forty minutes before all this, Ross was up in Aaron's room. For the sake of the law, let's say he found one of his friend's finished cigarettes in Aaron's room. Ross thought he would clean up a little and throw the cigarette away in Aaron's bathroom trash for him. What Ross did not realize was that the ash within the cigarette was still really hot from being lit recently. Aaron's bathroom trash can, like most bathroom trash cans, was filled with various paper, tissue, and cardboard products. Some my call that a giant container of "kindling" actually. Anyways, Ross' hot ash "reacted" well with said bin of flammable products. Hence the reason Ross was thinking to himself "Is there any way this is not my fault?" Very doubtful Ross. Unless someone sneaked into Aaron's room via his deck and decided to light his trash can on fire, and then leave, it was probably you. But at least Ross was trying to do something he never did when we lived together the first go-round, cleaning up after himself without being told. Mom will be proud.
