I had grilled chicken several hours ago, when I decided to go ahead and empty the grill and clean up my mess. I dumped the coals into a paper bag and took the bag to the community apartment dumpster. I had a brief moment where I wondered if I had waited long enough to let the coals cool off, but quickly assured myself that a couple of hours was plenty of time and happily went about my evening.
About 45 minutes later, I hear the faint sound of a fire truck's siren. I, of course, thought nothing of this because our apartment was less than a mile from the Hernando fire department. Seconds later, the siren was loud, but rather than quickly fading away as it normally did when the fire truck zoomed past the apartment, it maintained the same volume, and I daresay was getting louder?? Panic poured over me as I sat there, frozen in fear, next to Anna. I rush to the blinds to see where the fire truck was going, only to see it parked next to the dumpster, which was emitting a beautiful orange-glow that made it easier to see the pillar of smoke rising from it.
"Uh-oh....." I whisper from the window.
"What do you mean 'Uh-oh'? What is it?" asked Anna.
"Umm...there's a fire in the dumpster, and ummm....I think...maybe I started it." I admit, slowly turning to face Anna.
We quickly decided that the best thing for us to do is rid our porch of all evidence. I put the grill in the storage closet, and swept away all evidence of ash from our porch. The firemen put out the smoldering trash within 20 minutes and left the apartments shortly thereafter.
The next day, while working at Fred's Pharmacy in Hernando, a police officer who frequently came into the pharmacy to chat came in, and I decided to ask him about the fire.
"Oh yeah, some idiot put something hot in the dumpster, and it caught fire," the officer said.
"Pfft, yeah....what an idiot! I mean, who would do something that dumb?!"
Kevin McCalister said it best after unintentionally stealing the toothbrush from the convenient store in Home Alone, when he said, "I'm a criminal."
