Hypothetical situation: you’re at home (that’s not the extent of the hypothetical )
You are interrupted in the middle of something engaging, or perhaps in the middle of the night, by an intense fire or an emergency situation. You are all alone in the house- i.e. no pets/spouse/children- say they’re all out on a trip.
As you’re leaving, you can grab one thing to take with you and save from destruction. It can be anything you could physically carry out of the house, obviously you’re not going to be able to save your armoire or fridge!
So, what would be the thing you would grab? I know a lot of people would say “dog/child”, but that’s not what I’m looking for. What object in your house would be most important to you to save if you had to evacuate without a lot of forethought?
For me, it would probably be the painted portrait of my (deceased) grandmother that’s been handed down to my mother and will, probably, be handed down to me or my brother. Grabbing my grandmother’s ashes to save from a fire might be a bit redundant, and the portrait means more than the ashes, anyway. All of my important paperwork stuff is kept in a fireproof box already. If I had a laptop, I might want to take that, but I have a big boxy computer that I wouldn’t be able to unplug from everything quickly enough to take.
My address book. I haven’t memorized any of my family’s phone numbers and they all live in a different country from me, so they aren’t programmed into my mobile. I’d need to contact them.
My hard drive – or rather, the hard drive and the tower in which it lives. I could easily and quickly disconnect it from the monitor, router, and various peripherals, that’s not a problem. While nearly everything on the HD is backed up, it would be much simpler to just grab the tower…besides, things are backed up on more than one device. Believe it or not I feel very fortunate to not have many possessions (by choice and design) and things of sentimental value are stored in my mind, not in my home.
Wait. Has it been stipulated that we’re wearing clothing of some kind during the mad rush to beat the flames? Because if I’m in the buff I’ll have to change my answer to a robe or something.
A simple orange candy dish that was, for umpety ump years, on my grandmother’s back porch. It held lemon drops, peppermints, and pillow mints. During family get togethers we’d try to sneak candy, taking care not to rattle the lid. It took us until we were grown to realize that of course Grandma knew what we were doing, and let us get away with it.
She got it in 1924, as a thank you gift from a school board(she was a teacher) for arranging a children’s program during their annual meeting. I treasure this dish above all other personal possesion, including pictures. Those I could get copies of, mostly, as my family keeps big photo albums.
Thanks to Night Rabbit for this thread, it makes happy memories.
My laptop. I’d probably try to grab my bag on the way as well.
A few months ago our porch caught fire - it seemed deceptively small but it got to the point where we were afraid we’d have to evacuate and call the fire department. My roommate was absolutely freaking out - she was working as a research assistant to some hotshot journalist at the time, and our living room was littered with original documents and printed out research that only existed in hard copy form (so not saved on disk or anything). Thankfully we managed to put the fire out. If it had gotten out of hand I might have had to knock her out and drag her with me because she was hellbent on not abandoning those papers.
My purse. I lived through a house-fire in '97 and worried about getting the kid out and forgot anything else. (We survived fine, no worries, I basically didn’t own anything of value other than the kidlet!)
Hopefully, this would happen on one of the odd days that my phone and wallet are actually in the purse, they often get separated into pockets. Replacing all the cards and ID and such in the wallet is way to large of a PITA to deal with in a post-emergency environment.
Assuming I was clothed, I’d take my jacket and my binder. My camo jacket usually has all my necessities in it: wallet, phone, keys, mp3, Leatherman. My binder (from high school, decorated with MAS*H quotes written in sharpie) has all of my important paperwork like my Peace Corps info, immunization record, passport, student loan stuff, etc.
Haha I guess I was assuming that you’d be wearing clothing, or a bathrobe or something within easy acquire. Although, with all the snow outside (still!) on the lawn, a pair of boots might be a necessity, too!
My purse, my cell phone and if I could manage, I’d rip the cables out of the back of my PC and take that too. But I probably wouldn’t be able to carry all that, so purse and cell phone for sure. I hope my cigs are in my purse, 'cause I’m gonna need something to calm me down while I’m pacing around in street.
I’d love pictures, but I wouldn’t be able to get my hands on that relatively quickly. I would also want my personal files, important paperwork, but I’m a slob and it’s not in one place. (I should fix that.) Other than that, it’s all just stuff. I’d miss it a lot, but not worth worrying over in the grand scheme of things.
)