WITH POISE AND RATIONALITY

Felicity was one of my favorite TV shows. It's up there with the West Wing, Grey's Anatomy, and Dawson's Creek. With the exception of the West Wing, none of them add anything to my character or personality, and if anything they only serve to make me LESS of whatever I am. This story I'm going to tell proves it.

Yesterday I saw a rerun of Felicity where Felicity is working in the art studio and a mad fire breaks out just outside the door. Noel (of course NOEL) rushes in to save her just seconds before the fire engulfs the studio, but they only have time to save her, not the work she's been slaving away at for months. [end Felicity story]

I actually set my apartment's alarm last night, which is odd. I haven't been doing that lately. But there was creepy air last night, so I did. In the wee hours of the morning, I thought I heard it going off, or should I say, drowning. I thought I heard my alarm drowing...and I woke up. As I woke up, I thought, "NO, that's not the security alarm, that's the FIRE alarm drowning." (you can see where this is going, right?) Which, in MY mind, it WOULD be drowning if I were half asleep and my ears were blocked my layers of smoke and fire!

And WHY was it so dark in my apartment? AH! the smoke must be covering all of the little lights that I would normally see! The alarm clock, the glow from the street light outside, those sorts of things...I couldn't see any of them! It was all beginning to make sense as I was waking up. My apartment was on fire!

MY APARTMENT WAS ON FIRE!

I grabbed for my phone, and jumped out of bed. I ran downstairs, waking up in bits and pieces as I went. 1,2,3,4,...14 steps down the stairs. (I don't know that - I'm just writing that for effect - because I suppose that's the sort of thing one would remember at that moment). The entire time, I'm thinking, "MY APARTMENT IS ON FIRE! AHHHH!" and asking myself, "When is Noel (aka Robert) going to crash through the door and save the day?" I'd also flipped open my cell phone, because DID YOU KNOW! that your phone's display light probably works just as well as a flashlight in case of an emergency? I was using it to guide me through the layers of thick, black smoke around me to the front door. PANIC AT THE DISCO, to be sure! As I'm coming to the realization that my apartment, my lovely apartment, is ON FIRE, and I need to GET OUT. I reached for the door handle and

Only I'm pretty much waking up at this point, and realizing, my apartment is in fact, NOT on fire. There IS NO smoke and I CAN breathe just fine. And I certainly can't SEE any fire (my apartment is not that large - I'd see it if there was a fire). All of the lights ARE out, that's true enough, but there's no SMOKE obsuring the lights that are out. I can't hear that drowning alarm noise anymore, either.

What gives?

THE ELECTRICITY IS OUT.
Dang you Felicity! Filling the minds of the youth of America with all sorts of unnecessary drama. You should have stayed in that art room and had all your paints melt on you, and died a horrible death like the wicked witch, "I'm melting, I'm melting!"

A quick glance out the window showed the entire neighborhood was without power; a quick call to AEP confirmed that a car accident around the corner had knocked down a pole (AHHH...the drowning alarm sound? it WAS a drowning alarm sound. An ambulance or fire truck probably).

Felicity (she says with a fist raised in the air!). I never did like your curly hair anyway. Put away your flashlight phone Angie and go back to bed. "We expect to have service restored in by 5:30AM."