Smokin' Hot Firefighters and Cold-Hearted Burglars

On a cold February morning in 2010 I was driving my Camaro to work as usual when it started bumping around. Assuming I had a flat tire, I pulled over on the side of the interstate. As I was getting out of my car to look for a flat a man in a Terminix truck pulled off the interstate behind me and started screaming, "MA'AM! GET AWAY FROM YOUR CAR! RUN!" As I turned to look back at my car I saw flames shooting out from beneath the back of my car pyrotechnics style. The Terminix guy grabbed the small fire extinguisher from his truck and tried to put the flames out, but (as we learned later) it was an oil fire, so the extinguisher did no good. My keys, phone, wallet, purse and laptop were all in the flaming car. So Mr. Terminix called 911 while I stood there watching my car slowly melt into the pavement. A few minutes later the Pulaski County Fire Department pulled up beside my car. As if a car on fire is not already a spectacle, the fire department blocked off an entire lane of the interstate with orange cones and left the siren blaring and the lights flashing on the fire truck as 5 firefighters in full gear jumped out of the truck and began spraying my car with fire extinguishers. After they put out the fire under the back of my car, they also sprayed the whole outside and even popped my hood and sprayed in there too, just for good measure I guess. So what the fire didn't damage, the spray got. This whole time I was just standing there on the side of the road watching all of the action happen as rubberneckers driving past shook their heads in awe. Traffic was backed up for 9 miles according to the radio. Whoopsie!

With the flames extinguished Mr. Terminix left me in the care of the fire department and left. I called my brother for a ride, but it was freezing cold outside so the kind firemen offered to let me wait in their fire truck until he arrived to pick me up. Despite the trauma of just having watched my car melt, getting to sit in the fire truck was AWESOME. The firefighters showed me around the truck and taught me what everything was for. I was busily texting my mom and friends with messages like, "My car is probably ruined. I'll tell you about that later. But I'm in a FIRE TRUCK right now!" Hello priorities! My brother finally arrived to collect me from the fire department and a tow-truck came to collect my poor Camaro. I got dropped off at my parents' house and thought the day's adventure was over.

...but I was SO wrong. Less than an hour after being dropped at my parents' house their phone rang. It was a neighbor from two doors down calling to tell me that she had just come home from work and caught a guy trying to get in to her house through the front door. She was calling the house to say that there were two more guys that were now at my parents' front door and that she had called the police. Sure enough, a quick peek through the window showed that there were indeed 2 guys hovering on the porch. A third was walking through the front yard. I quickly called for my dad, who had come home from work early due to the "Hey Dad, my car is on fire, but it's cool I'm hanging with the fire fighters" text messages. As he was stepping outside to confront the burglars the Police arrived. 2 of the would-be burglars took off running across the yard. I watched as a very spry cop tackled one of the burglars right there in the front yard and cuffed him. The other two burglars took off on foot and got away. In retrospect, texting my already concerned-about-the-car-fire mother with "A cop just tackled a guy in our front yard! Look I took a picture!" was probably not the best thing for her blood pressure. 

In the end, the Camaro was replaced with a Mustang convertible and the would-be burglar that got caught in our yard got deported. And I lived happily ever after.