Fire safety is something that’s discussed a lot with kids these days. We talk about it at home, they hear about it in school, on TV, and pretty much everywhere else. The kids each have a firefighter assigned to their school so they get to know him year after year. They have fire drills at school, of course, and we have a fire escape plan at home as well. The kids can both recite our home plan and one Sunday morning Eve and Alan even practiced it. The whole thing made Lex too nervous so he didn’t want to participate and I was reading the paper (and sharing in Lex’s nervousness!) so Eve and Alan were on their own. Overall I think they are well educated in fire safety and, although I hope the situation never EVER arises, I think they would know what to do.
Now I have a new fear.
Eve came into my room at 4am today saying she couldn’t sleep. I cuddled her in my arms and brought her back to bed. While we snuggled in bed she said to me, quite calmly, “Mommy, as I was heading to your room I checked downstairs for smoke. But there was none so I went to your room.” I said, “You went downstairs?!?” She said, “No, I just looked. If there was smoke I would have gone outside.” I wanted to scream NEVER, NEVER, NEVER go outside without me in the middle of the night!!! But I didn’t, because it was 4am and because that’s exactly what our fire plan says to do. I told her that if there was a fire the smoke alarms would be going off. She countered with, “What if the batteries died?” I explained that they beep when the battery is low and then we put new batteries in them so they will always work. She seemed doubtful. Not fearful, just doubtful. I’ve always imagined a serious fire, alarms going off, smoke so think you’re choking on it, flames licking at your heals… but apparently the slightest hint of smoke might be enough to send her out! A smoky wisp in a little girl’s imagination could leave her out in her pjs on a cold night, sitting alone on the neighbor’s front porch. Would she wonder why no one else was coming out? Would she worry we were all burning in the imaginary fire? Would she eventually figure it out and come back inside? Crawling back into her bed, leaving me none the wiser?! Needless to say, I did not sleep well the rest of the night.
I think we need very loud bells on the doors.
