Originally published in The Clifton Courier, October 18, 2017

The other day the fire alarm went off in my building.

It was actually very convenient because I was just about to do a workout that promised to “build strength” and “build endurance” in 46 minutes. I’d been putting it off all afternoon and just when I finally psyched myself up to do it, the alarm went off. Some people think that fate is a load of hogwash but really, if that wasn’t a sign that I shouldn’t exercise than what else could it have been? It’s just too much of a coincidence.

Anyway, after the alarm sounded for a few cycles it became clear that it wasn’t stopping. And while I didn’t smell any smoke or see any signs of a fire, I thought it was probably a good idea to follow the instructions of the automated voice blaring through the speakers in the hallway.

But because I’m only one floor away from the exit, I felt like I had a bit of time to prepare myself to leave.

I know from my experience with school fire drills that you’re supposed to leave everything behind and bail in an orderly fashion, but no one ever did that. You’re not just going to leave your Nokia 3315 sitting in your pencil case for crying out loud.

I was fairly confident this was a false alarm, but the voice in my head that shouts “what if” and clangs saucepan lids together is capable of creating a lot of volume so I generally pay attention to it (I know this goes against all the parenting techniques I learned form watching Supernanny, but it’s hard to ignore a tantrum).

So in case I wouldn’t be able to enter my apartment again, I decided to grab a bag.

But then I had to work out which items from my personal inventory of crap were worth saving.

As a child I used to get very paranoid about natural disasters and planned my response to a severe flood or bushfire scenario (I also used to think Nazis were coming for me via rail thanks to my exposure to a couple of World War II movies at a pivotal time in my development… but that’s probably a story for a psychologist). As such, I would store a little plastic bag of my prized possessions so I would be ready to go. From memory, this included my teddy bear and whatever jewellery I possessed at the time that would have been valued as merely “sentimental” by an Antiques Roadshow expert. I was ever ready.

But now that I was actually in this situation I was totally unprepared.

So what did I grab? My laptop that is almost heavy enough to use as a something to break the door open. Like in Titanic when Leo teams up with the stereotypical Frenchman and the stereotypical Irish lad (whose deaths no one seems to care about) to smash a gate. You know, they rip the bench off the side of the wall with their sheer male anger and bust open the gates to save the lower class?

They could have done that with my laptop.

I also grabbed my wallet, my phone charger, a ring I was given by my sisters and an old Linotype block with clown faces on it. Then I legged it in an orderly fashion downstairs.

I still had plenty of room in my bag. It seemed everything else I was happy to let burn.

Maybe this means I’m non-materialistic. Perhaps I just don’t care about physical things. Like, maybe I’m just super enlightened and know that if I have air in my lungs and a heart that beats, I have everything I need. I could just be really spiritual, man.

Or maybe this just means that I have no valuables worth saving and my meagre possessions are worthless.

Read into it what you will.