The "Fire in Room 308" Story

It was an ordinary day, I was headed to school for another day of teaching. Always liked to get to school early to make sure I had everything prepared for the day. I would rather come in an hour early instead of staying an extra hour in the evening. As soon as I entered the building through the back door of the wood shop I could smell it. What is that? It smells like something was burning. I quickly looked around and didn't see anything so I headed out of the wood shop and up the hall towards my classroom. I taught Industrial Arts for many years. Today Industrial Arts is referred to as Tech Ed. Used to be called Manual Arts. Same stuff, same materials, almost the same curriculum, but a different name every so often. We had to do that because the girls had changed from Home Economics to Consumer Science. Same classroom for them with the same teachers and same oven and stove, but a new name. Called PROGRESS. Oh, yeah!! There now is a computer in the different rooms. That's where you get the Tech and Science names. Well, as I got closer to my room, 308, the smell was stronger. Burning wood. I turned the corner and the maintenance guys were in front of my door. "Can't use the room for awhile," one of them told me. "You must have forgot to turn off your little heater last night and the corner of the room caught fire. You could see the flames all over the neighborhood coming out the window." Holy S*#t, I thought. How many teachers had ever caught their room on fire? And didn't lose their job. And, lived to write a story about it. I couldn't have forgot to turn off the heater. But, I must have. The heater is a unit that we use to cure ink after we have finished screen-printing t-shirts. Gets real hot! Evidently so hot that it caught the wooden counter covered with Formica under it on fire. The bottom of the unit has a thick metal shelf on it to prevent that from happening, but it didn't matter. They allowed me to go into the room to see what had happened. Counter in the back corner of the room next to the press was destroyed as were the cabinets and ceiling tiles above it. The window had broken out allowing the smoke to escape and fanning the flames. Lucky the fire didn't get 10 feet closer to the press and the flammable gallon cans of cleaners next to it. Also, lucky that the fire department is within visual sight of the school. As I was looking around, in walked Barry W. who is the department chairman and who shared the room with me. We both taught Graphic Arts and I also taught photography in the adjoining darkroom. He wanted to know what had happened and I told him. He all of a sudden looked white and as he looked at me he said, "That was me who left the unit on last night. I had a few students stay late to do some t-shirts and must have forgotten to turn off the unit." Whoa, was I relieved. We were back in the room in a few days and the heating culprit was replaced with a new one which had a timer on it that would automatically shut off if not turned off.Allegedly! It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.