No one ever expects...

...The fire alarm!!! Heh. See, you thought it was going to be the Spanish Inquisition. I told you clearly in the title. Never saw it coming did you? Neither did the boys! Which might explain the shenanigans that followed.



Basically, we'd planned the fire alarm for about 11 'o clock at night. As a boarding school we have to do the odd night time drill even though we do them during the day fairly regularly. The night ones are still quite rare but even so, they pretty much go the same as the day time ones. Don't they? We thought so. I hadn't been here for a night time fire alarm and joy of joys, I was on duty. (Which involves nagging them through the bedtime routine and whatnot.)



I was given the exciting task of setting the alarm off, and amused our headteacher a great deal as I scampered off up the stair squealing with delight. The sheer feeling of power as I set the alarm off with the little plastic poky thing knowing that the whole school would be roused and sent downstairs was both heady and strangely addictive. Really, I would have preferred to smash the glass thing for the full adrenaline rush, but I'll save that for my Alzheimer's years.



Oh. It was great. Knowing you'd created your own personal pandemonium! It was so loud!! I think I uncovered some hitherto unknown miscreant tendencies at that moment. After a moment standing in the very loud darkness, I managed to tear myself away and went efficiently to check that all my little charges were processing outside in an orderly manner.



Were they heck! The alarm had been screaming for at least a full minute and a half and ONE CHILD had got out of bed in my dormitory. Jeez. Said child was also more keen on preparing to run downstairs screaming and waving arms dramatically rather than waking up his soon to be burned slumbering peers. I switched a light on, which woke most of them up, for some absurd reason. Amongst a chorus of 'What's happening?', 'Is it morning?', 'Do I have to get out of bed?', I explained slowly and clearly what was happening in the manner of a particularly annoying air hostess, managing to say 'For GOD'S sake!' a record less than four times. Finally convinced that there did appear to be an ear splitting siren going off and that it suggested leaving the building RIGHT THE HELL NOW!!! they put on dressing gowns and slippers and started to move through the school. I, on the other hand, began the exciting process of checking every bed on the way through the dorm. As usual, every single child had made sure to leave their duvets in a chillingly accurate rendition of the human form! At the end of my tour I found the final boy, awake but still comfortably dozing wrapped up cosily in his bed. If only I had been carrying one of those air horn things...



Boy dressed and wandering 'Night of the Living Dead' stylee towards the staircase, I beat a hasty exit as one of my coworkers came to see how it was going. He was, if anything, more excited about this than I was. (Though the whole calm explanation thing I'd had to do rather killed my buzz...) As I walked towards him talking, I happened to randomly push open the bathroom door, with a mind to just glance in. As I did so, I spotted one of the older boys in there, calmly applying toothpaste to his toothbrush and preparing to brush his teeth as they do every morning. It says a great deal about how I understand the feeling of recently having been in a very deep sleep, that rather than giving instructions, I gently removed the toothbrush from his hand, took him by the arm and lead him down to the front stairs. Bear in mind that the fire alarm has been screaming at approximately the level of a police siren for about three minutes by this point. As I said to him later, "Well at least you appreciate the need for good oral hygiene, even in the event of an imminent fiery death."



During the line up outside, we discovered that we were missing two of the smaller boys from the other dorm who had been stuffed into dressing gowns and sent outside, but had merely gone to the toilet and then got back into bed and gone to sleep. The sheer power of children to sleep through anything astounds me! Then I put them all back to bed and had a large glass of wine. Though given my enjoyment of sounding the alarm, it probably should have been a cigarette.



Seriously, I'm twisted. I keep thinking about the illicit thrill of starting the whole thing off! You should expect to find me later, at the scene of the crime. Looking lovingly at the spot where it all happened like some kind of cheap crime thriller serial murderer.