Silly Me

When I was 8 years old, my house burned down.  No, the trailer we were renting burned down.  I still remember stuff about it, which is surprising since I have the crappiest memory ever.

My sister, Vickie (who was 6) and I were taking a bath.  My mother was resting on the couch..not sure if she was sleeping or not.  My youngest sister, Amy (she was 2) was playing in the livingroom near my mother and Kelly (4 years old) was in the bedroom.  Kelly had dug into my mothers purse and taken her lighter.  Evidently, friends of my mother’s thought it would be “funny” to teach her how to light it.  My mother didn’t feel the same way.   She of course didn’t know Kelly had it.

So Kelly was in the bedroom playing with the lighter.  She got it lit and lit a dress in the closet on fire.  She said it burned fast and she tried blowing it out “like birthday candles”.  Once she realized it was out of hand, she woke my mother.  She told her that the bedroom was on fire.  My mother went to see and knew immediately there was no stopping it.  She ran to the living room and snatched up Amy.  Kelly, apparently, ran out the front door (I did not know this).  My mother ran out the back door (which was right across the hall from the bathroom) and told Vickie and I to get out of the house.  We were both still naked since we had just got out of the bathtub.  Vickie ran out with my mother without hesitation.   I did not.  I was confused.  I didn’t know what was going on or why my mother was upset and why she ran out so fast.

I stood there for what seemed like a long tie, but was probably just a minute or 2.  I remember turning my head to the left and seeing this huge wall of fire from the floor to ceiling.  It seemed like it was only a few feet away from me, but I can’t be sure exactly.  I remember screaming at the top of my lungs for what felt like forever.  I was screaming at the owners son who was around my age to get his father (I guess).  He was in the street playing baseball.  So since there were a lot of neighborhood kids there, he didn’t hear me.

Since I was still naked, I didn’t want to leave.  I looked to my right (at my bedroom..where my clothes were) and back to my left trying to decide if I had time to put clothes on.  My mother had come back from getting the owner and calling the fire department and saw me looking back and forth.  She knew exactly what I was thinking.  I have to mention I have no memory of this part.  I only remember being stunned and not being able to move.  My mother ran up the steps and pulled me out of the house.  The next thing I remember, Vickie and I were standing with our backs to the trailer across from ours, watching everything we owned go up in smoke, trying to cover ourselves up, crying.  One of the neighborhood boys kept looking at us.  My mother grabbed a rug off of someone’s clothes line and wrapped it around us.

We went to the owners house to wait for I have no idea what.  My step-dad got home from work to a pile of ashes and freaked out until he found us.  I don’t remember where we stayed that night.  I know  that we couldn’t go to school the next day because we didn’t have any shoes.  And even when I went back to school, I couldn’t speak.  I had lost my voice from screaming.

We didn’t have anywhere to go, so we lived in some trailer while my parents saved money and moved us to Guam to start over.  My step-dad’s parents lived there.  But that’s a whole other story.

We’re all very lucky that we only lost stuff.  To this day I’m a freak about potential house fires.  I check and double check the stove and I’m weird about things being plugged in.  I know I can’t control everything, but I try.  So, as promised, the fire story.  And we still give Kelly crap for burning it down.