Seriously, the subject of fire drills can be quite comical. As both a former student and then a former teacher, I am reminded of a few interesting little situations that always make me smile.

First, as a student, fire drills were welcome events that managed to interrupt many of our most tiresome activities, like taking tests. There was something wonderful about the irritation they caused our teachers. Teachers are always irritated when they lose momentary control of their mini-worlds. Teenagers always love a chance to irritate an adult. Therefore, it is completely natural that teenagers would love a fire drill.

In college, fire drills took on a different meaning. Someone in our dorm thought it was very entertaining to pull the fire alarm at two in the morning. Maybe it was because they knew they were failing and wanted all the other students to suffer sleep deprivation so they would fail too. Or, maybe they were bored with their economics notes and just needed to get out. Or, maybe they just wanted to compare all of their friends' pajama styles. Whatever the reason, every morning the alarm would sound and everybody would file out of the dorm and stand in the cold, waiting for the all clear. Confident that they would not be caught, the perpetrator continued until it became almost a nightly tradition.

Little did the perpetrators know that the chemistry students had grown weary of the fun and games. One night, they pulled the alarm one too many times. We all stood outside the dorm shivering, thinking that this was the usual irritation. This time, however, the status quo was broken. The resident assistants had us all line up and show our hands. They came along the line with a black light until they found the hands that lit up with a beautiful blue glow. Earlier in the day, they had put fluorescent powder on the alarm handles all over the building. It did not stop the fun and games. It was amazing how many ways perpetrators found to pull the alarm without actually touching it!

The fire drill issue took on another dimension when I became a chemistry teacher. They usually happened when my students were right in the middle of some experiment that was totally ruined and had to be rerun because of the interruption. But, that was not what bothered me most about fire drills. Incredulously, our fire plan called for my class to exit the building and go stand under the transformers in the alley. If there was a fire, it was usually due

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