What would you grab?

Imagine you were woken up in the middle of the night because the fire alarm is going off. You have to get out fast because of a fire. What would you grab? Would you just try to get out and not care about anything? Would grab your pet or family photos?
This is one thing I have wondered myself. Sure I would want to grab my cat and my laptop’s full my photography. Of course I would make sure Alex got out safe. But I don’t think you can truly know what your reaction will be till it would really happen. Well, on New Year’s Day I found out what I would grab.

For New Year’s Alex and I and some friends stayed downtown Portland at a hotel. It was a very quiet new years for us. We got takeout and played games in the hotel room till around 2am. We had a suite on the top floor. On the same floor there was some partying going on. (Pretty sure they were under age) It was new years so it’s to be expected. We all to bed around 2 and at 6am we were very rudely awakened by a very loud fire alarm. At first I was very annoyed. I thought someone was messing around a pulled and the alarm. So Alex I get up; put on coats. Our friends left the room first. Right as the door slammed behide them they started banging on the door. Alex opened the door to the hall full of smoke. I grabbed my phone and we all raced down the stairs. The stairwell was full of this toxic smelling smoke that we were all coughing on. It was very scary and we were all getting confused how to get out of the stairwell. Finally we got out and everyone in the lobby was calm like nothing was really going on. People were in the building still so we told the man at the front desk there was smoke on the 9th floor and he was surprised. It was so strange. Alex got his car and we parked a block down from the hotel and waited to see what was going on. The fire trucks came and we went for a drive around the city to find some place open we could get water to get the taste of the toxic smoke out of our mouths. A half hour later we got back to the hotel to find everyone had been let back in and there hadn’t been a fire at all. Apparently the under age kids of the top floor with us decided to have fire extinguisher fight. What we thought was smoke was powder from a fire extinguisher. The worst part was the only thing they did to the kid was tell them to settle down. They didn’t kick them out or anything! We went back to room and slept for a few more hours. It defiantly was a new years to remember.

So I learned that I would grab my phone and Alex would grab his phone and keys. Our friends grab a laptop and purse. I don’t know why I didn’t grab my purse. I remember looking at it and not thinking I needed it. It’s interesting what ends up being important in these kinds of circumstances.