In Hot Water

This story involves nudity. You were forewarned.

Anyway, this morning I was taking a shower in the hall bathroom(for your information--I'm staying in a DC college dorm room this summer). I'm a big fan of showers; I try to take one every week.

Understand one thing: the showers in this bathroom are loud. Vuvuzela-level loud. Someone could be gruesomely murdered in the next stall, and you wouldn't even realize it until their blood started pooling in your drain.

I'm taking a shower when I hear what sounds like an ambulance siren. Like I said, the shower is loud, so the siren sounds kind of distant. I don't think much of it. Probably some mid-level functionary at the Department of Agriculture got run over while texting on his Blackberry or something.

A few minutes pass. I hear the siren again. And again a couple seconds later. Geez, I think, that's an awfully persistent ambulance. Maybe it's parked right outside the dorm. But the siren keeps going every couple of seconds. Finally, a horrible realization dawns on me--doubly horrible, considering that I just lathered up my face for shaving. Could it be a...

FIRE ALARM! AAAAARGH!

If there had been anyone else in the bathroom at the time, they would have heard me yell "Goddamnit!" in a voice so loud God himself probably blushed. Now I faced a conundrum: assume it was a drill and finish my shower, at the risk of being boiled alive, or grab my shower caddy and make a run for it, at the risk of ending up locked out of the dorm in my underwear?

My self-preservation won out. Barely. Only the thought of being cooked like a pepperoni hot pocket got me moving. And that's how I ended up on the streets of Washington, DC in my underwear and a towel at 8:30 in the morning. The front of my underwear might have been open, too. I decided not to look. If it was open, I probably would have died of utter humiliating right there.

Perhaps I should consider this little adventure a public service. The sight of me--and a bunch of other pajama-wearing interns--standing on the sidewalk was probably a refreshing change of pace for most morning commuters. So there; I've done my good deed for the week.