or What happens when the fire alarm goes off in a dorm while you’re taking a shower.
At least it’s a Sunday night on a three day weekend, so no one’s around. And it’s better than receiving a $600 fine from a fireman who’d catch me by walking in and opening the shower curtain. Heh, with the mood I was in when it happened, I was very tempted to ask a cute guy [if there were any that time] to join me. Hormones are interesting things… Jeez, this is quite a ramble.
So, anyone get stuck in a situation where they feel exposed but can’t do much about it?
Yup, returning to our hotel at about 1 AM after stocktaking some airport shop somewhere, we retired to our rooms, I had undressed to my undies when there was a knock on the door. My colleague in the room opposite had set the gear up to recharge but was worried about the sound it was making, I stepped across the hallway and heard my door click behind me.
He had to go to reception:
“I need a spare key for Mr Mangetout’s room please, he is locked out”
“Umm, why can’t he come and ask for the key himself?”
“He’s got no clothes on”
(Shocked look from receptionist)
“No, it’s OK, he’s in my room”
“Ohhh, I understand…”
yup- was in a nice hotel in denver- ordered room service for breakfast- was in shower in am when they came- answered door in towel, very attractive, very embarrassed irish lass brought in food, and I didn’t feel that it was appropriate to invite her to share my breakfast…
I was staying with mum and dad at their new unit, they had set me up to sleep in the lounge room which has floor to ceiling windows across 3 sides. The first night I got changed I shut the curtains but didn’t realise that with the light on it was like there were no curtains. Guys in the units opposite teased me about it for ages.
I’ve got one for you.
The first day in the barracks at my first permanent duty station after basic traing and TechSchool (Air Force.) I walked down to the bathroom in my underdrawers to take a leak. Coming back, I discover that my roommate has already headed for breakfast and that the doors in the barracks room can only be opened with a key from the outside. I mentioned the underware, right? No pockets. I called the office (telephone for on base calls in the hallway) where my roommate works, and asked them to have him come back to the room as soon as he shows up. Then I leaned back against the wall to wait. It is a men’s barracks after all, so the only thing embarassing about standing there is having to admit that I forgot my key.
It turns out that things are a little different when you get out of the training barracks and into real life. In the training barracks, men and women are strictly seperated, and no visitors of the opposite sex are allowed. In the regular barracks, women are free to come and go as they like. Our barracks was all men, but plenty of the guys had girlfriends.
So, I’m standing there in my drawers and this really cute chick bebops into the hallway and heads for the room next door to mine. It seems he worked on night shift, and she was coming into visit him during his off time.
What do you do in such a moment? You non-chalantly wave and say good morning.
Years later, I ran into her in a bar downtown (a couple of years after her old boyfriend had moved on) and we had a really good time. The only one night (well, more like two night) stand in my life.
I was the RA for a floor of 20 guys at the KY Governor’s Scholars Program one summer. We were having a fire drill after curfew one night, and I knew about it in advance. Being a smartass, I told the guys about it and had them all strip down to their boxers, wet their hair, and wrap themselves in a towel before they went down.
People were curious at just exactly why every single one of them were in the shower at the time…
Lol, Monstre, if you’re that curious, email me. I’m not about to write exactly where I live on a message board… that’d be like putting my social security number on a personal webpage.
But yeah, fire alarms happen fairly often in my dorm, although they’re not as horribly often as they were in the first month.
In high school, there was a fire drill in maybe November (I just remember temps were probably in the 40s). There were a few guys who had been swimming in their PE class, and they had to wait outside, wet, barefoot, and with nothing but a towel to cover them. In that instance, I think some warning (since it was a drill, not an actual alarm) to that class would have been appropriate.
When I was in the dorms, I slept through at least one fire alarm. That was the last year before they put alarm bells in each room–at that time there were two per wing, located in the hallways. I’m a heavy sleeper, and my roommate was gone that weekend.
Mirrored Indigo Shadows, the same thing happened to me when I was a college freshman just over eight years ago. It was a Sunday night, too, but a two-day weekend, so everyone was around! Fortunately, I had brought my bathrobe with me, but with all the people crowding the hallways, there was no way I could go back to my room for anything else, so I stood out on the cold concrete in bare feet. A girl from my floor felt sorry for me, so she lent me her slippers (she was wearing socks underneath). I stuck near her so that I could remember whom I should give the slippers back to. When they ushered us all into the cafeteria of a neighboring dorm (The fire alarm wasn’t a prank, after all–there was something wrong with the boiler and they wanted to evacuate the building), I found out that that girl was friends with a guy that I had met at the first meeting of one of the clubs I was in. I started chatting with him.
Guess what? I’m married to that guy now! He claims now that he didn’t really remember me fromt he club meeting–apparently, I didn’t make much of an impression on him until I was half-naked and shivering!
This happened to me, I walked outside at 10 Am with only a towel. Any chance I had of going back to my room to put anything on was thwarted because my roommate had already left for the fire alarm, locking the door behind him. It was not a pleasent experience.
It went off again last night at 2am… I was ready to slug whoever it might’ve been if it was actually a person who did that. Let’s just say I really don’t like being interrupted in my sleep when I’ve just gotten enough sleep to barely be able to hear anything. I’ve changed my signature accordingly to how frustrating things can be in this dorm.
False firealarms in dorms really annoy me, something really should be done about them. Its like everyone’s forgotten all those kids (30 or so) that actually DIED when they slept through a fire alarm that was real for once. If ever they get uppity and decide to give me a JR (a judicial referal at my school) I would tear it up in the RA’s face. It disgusts me how reckless they are with college kid’s lives. Oh well, all I can say is that they will end up getting their asses sued off for neglegence. Somebody needs to find a solution to this problem before hundreds end up dead.
Pythagras, I think that’s why they have that $600 fine that Indigo was talking about–so that every student evacuates the building whether they think the alarm is real or not. You’re either avoiding the fine or avoiding death. Yeah, they should stop the idiots who pull pranks (the asshats who pull it at 4 am during finals week are the worst!), but it is in your best interests to evacuate the building each time.
Isn’t the RA supposed to go around knocking on people’s doors during a fire alarm so that they don’t sleep through it, or was the RA blase about the whole process as well? I know that I didn’t actually hear the fire alarm when I was in the shower–someone came into the bathroom and told me, and told me of the potential financial penalties if I ignored it (which I was very tempted to do). I assume that this was the RA or one of the night security people.
Well I slept through my fair share of fire alarms. Perhaps it was stupid, but the school has to figure people are going to do this. Ive never beed dragged out by an RA, nor is there a major fine (that I know of) at my school. Lots of time its a prank, other times its somebody burning popcorn. Something should be done. The more modern dorms do not suffer from this nearly as much.
In any case, there will be a disaster worst than what happened at Seton Hall years ago and somebody’s gonna get sued.
When I lived in B’more in thre 1970s I had a reputation for losing my clothes. I used to wear a lot of thrift-shop frocks from the 1920s–50s, and the seams weren’t always what they might have been . . . Two instances come to mind:
• I’m out dancing, wearing a sequined evening gown from the 1930s. What I don’t notice is that as I dance, the sequins are dropping off one by one, and eventually I am wearing nothing but black netting. My date tossed his coat around me and we made a quick getaway.
• I was walkin’ down the street, wearing a black wrap-skirt, awful 1970s hooker platforms (it was the 1970s, and that’s all you could find), and a 1960s baby-doll nightie as a blouse, tucked into the skirt. I glance in a mirror as I go by and notice that the skirt has unwrapped and dropped off about two blocks ago, leaving me wearing a baby-doll nightie and hooker shoes . . . I have never worn a wrap-skirt since . . . Don’t trust the bastards.
