Harding Memories

Greg Kendall-Ball has asked people to post funny or tragic stories from their time at Harding University. He promised that extra points would be awarded if the story involved fire, so I posted this story.

I decided to post it here, too, since I haven't written anything in a while. Read it and weep for my youthful stupidity.

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One night my roommate (name withheld) had just finished writing a paper which he had particularly hated writing.

While staring at his pile of Xeroxed research materials in disdain, he said something like, “I wish I could just burn all those stupid papers.” Naturally, I said, “Ooooh, you should. Do it!”

It didn’t occur to either of us that it might not be a good idea to burn them in his plastic trashcan. That’s what we did. In our dorm room.

The flames quickly leapt up high above the rim of the trashcan, and the room began filling with thick smoke. The plastic began to melt and a flaming hole appeared on its side. My roommate threw a pair of jeans over the fire, hoping to smother it, but sadly, the jeans also caught fire. We finally stopped the flames by filling up mugs with water from our sinks and throwing the water at the trashcan.

By this time we could hardly breathe in the room because of all the smoke. We each opened a window and stuck our head out, laughing and talking to one another with our heads outside.

We quit laughing when we heard the dorm manager running up and down the stairs and hallways searching for the source of the burning smell.

Every time he neared our room, we turned out the lights and jumped into bed with our clothes on, pretending to be asleep. He went back and forth several times, so we turned out the lights and jumped into bed several times.

Finally, the dorm manager opened our door, demanding to know what was going on. My roommate “sleepily” replied, “What? Oh…. Some papers….. got… burned.”

I don’t think the dorm manager fell for our clever, “we’ve been asleep for hours” routine, but all he did was yell, “STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!” and close the door. Fortunately, there were no further consequences.