Vanity versus death.
For a couple years, I worked in center city Philly — 18th and JFK. At lunchtime, I’d make my way past Love park to the gym at 15th and Arch. It’s an ancient YMCA building with a pool in the basement.
Lap swimming is a form of sensory deprivation. Not in the total absence of senses, but in the inability to hear anything beyond the sloshing of your arms through the water and the inability to see anything past the radius of those arms, except some hazy, amoebic glow.
Consequently, you find yourself retreating internally, oblivious to what’s happening around you. There’s really no other way.
On this mid-winter day, deep in the throws of this sensory deprivation, I became vaguely aware of a flashing light. I stopped to pick my head up and look around. There it was — the flashing light came from the fire alarm on the wall.
For how long? Impossible to know, but I wasn’t nervous. Because I, like you, have participated in hundreds of fire drills throughout my 50+ years. So I drug my annoyed self onto the pool deck, fully expecting to hide in the locker room until we got the all-clear.
But something happened on my way to the locker room. A guy ran past me, yelling, “Fire! Get out, now!”
Uh oh.
There I stand, dripping wet in nothing but jammers and my towel. It’s 15-degrees outside. The building is on fire. I’m in the basement.
