Freshman Memories

In a moment of reminiscence, I pulled out the old stories I wrote about college life. Wow. We had quite the times. One story in particular made me laugh out loud, centering around my freshman roommate Sara, a smuggled toaster, a hapless bagel, and a protesting fire alarm. Maybe this is only funny to me, but I thought I'd share anyway. =)

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It was a peaceful evening of procrastination, with all of us doing our best to forget about the homework we had to do. Sara decided to do something to calm the hunger pains she was experiencing and proceeded to draw her forbidden toaster out of its hiding place. Soon she had a bagel snugly lodged in the appliance and it was happily being seared.

Unbeknownst to the luckless bagel, however, it was not destined for a mere moment of warmth, for it soon began to feel the effects of overexposure to extreme heat and discovered its delicate white flesh turning not tan, but charcoal. An acute sense of pain also accompanied this event, until the bagel was finally rescued from its torment and soothed with an excess of butter spread over its burning wounds.

The fire alarm, however, was next to be injured, with the smoke caused by the bagel’s overexposure offending the alarm’s delicate sensitivity to the acrid odor. In decided protestation of this invasion of the fresh air, the fire alarm felt called upon to let out its loud warning cry of “Beeeeep, beeeeep…” This in turn caused all of us to start in wonder and worry and a scramble ensued as we tried to determine the problem.

Sara was soon able to get the alarm calmed and quiet again, and all was well. The ironic thing however, was that we had been without a smoke alarm for the entire first semester. My mom had taken a picture of me on my bed the first day we moved in, and said bed happened to be positioned directly in front of the smoke alarm’s residence, though it was empty at the time. This disturbed Mom every time she looked at it, and she finally called our R.D. to inform her of the delinquent alarm. While we were on Christmas break, a replacement was found to fill the space, and my mom’s anxieties were relieved. However, it also made this entire scenario with the burnt bagel possible.

As Jennifer so eloquently stated it, “We never had this problem before they put the smoke alarm in!” At least the fire department wasn’t called, and we escaped having to pay the $500 fine that a visit from them would have been!