The Things We Lost in the Fire - By Charlie Spink

I’m sure that you have all been asked the question, “If your house was on fire, and you could only grab one thing, what would it be?”

  

There is no right or wrong answer here, but there is at least one very dumb one.  Once in my philosophy class our teacher asked a young lady what one thing she would grab in a fire and she said that she would grab her dead  grandmother’s ashes. 

  

Personally, I thought that was a pretty stupid response.  If the house is on fire then there will be no shortage on ashes anytime soon.  Give it an hour and the whole house is grandmas ashes. So when this young lady gave her answer I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. 

So she asked me, “Okay Charlie, what would be the first thing you’d grab if your house was on fire?”

  

I told her “That’s easy; the first thing that I would grab during a fire would be the FIRE EXTINGUISHER! That way I could save all of my stuff and not have to play favorites.”  That shut her up pretty quickly.

On a side-note: Whoever came up with the phrase “you’ve gotta fight fire, with fire” has gotta be the worst fire fighter ever.

Water, Ice, hoses, blankets, pissing Dalmatians, whatever the heck they put in fire-extinguishers: those things are what you should fight fire with.

If my house was burning down and some imbecile came in with a flame-thrower I would want his ass thrown off of the force immediately. 

At the end of the day objects are only as valuable as we make them and the magic of our best memories can never really be confined to our tangible treasures. And in all seriousness it would be tough to choose just one or two artifacts to save in case of an inextinguishable emergency.

So here's a hot tip: learn how to use a fire extinguisher.  That way when somebody asks you the question of "What's the first thing that you'd grab in a fire?" you be able to blow their minds with this simple solution. "The Fire Extinguisher."

From now on you won't be fighting "fire with fire", you'll be fighting "fire with knowledge" (or at least the knowledge of how to use a fire extinguisher).  Knowledge is fun, functional and far less flammable than fire.  

Hopefully this "sparks" up a conversation or two on how to properly use a fire extinguisher.  Because not knowing how to use one when you need it is not cool (on the contrary it's uncomfortably hot and can often lead to involuntary cremation). 

Homeowners, always keep a fire extinguisher close at hand, I'm sure that grandma's ashes will understand.