Narrow stairways. Crowds of strangers.

My sweetheart and I had a hot date last night. We dressed up all squeaky clean and I wore my smokin’ red heels and a dress—‘tis the season to wear a dress without freezing. And my darling: oh, he’s such a handsome devil. We ate a fancy dinner and went to see Merchant of Venice at the Guthrie. In the middle of the first act, bright lights started flashing like camera bulbs. It was the part where Portia’s first suitor opens the golden casket and is told he has to get out, so we thought it was some weird part of the play—like the flashing lights was Portia’s security system or something? I’m not sure what we thought—the actors got all weird and then a nice lady told us that there was a fire and we all had to leave.

Let me tell you—all eight million audience members had plenty of time on the slow saunter down five stories of narrow stairway to absorb the reality that life can, indeed, change in a matter of moments. A few fire trucks showed up a while later and firemen dashed inside as they do and a while later the staff waved us all back inside. I don’t know if it was a grease fire or a bomb threat or a malfunction of the alarm system or what—but I can tell you, if it would’ve been real, things would’ve been ugly.

What I found interesting was eavesdropping on other people's conversations. Some of them went like this "Well, we're going to get out of here so late now. What and inconvenience. Do you think they'll refund our tickets? Our night has just taken a turn for the worse, blah blah blah." And other conversations went something like this: "I'm so thankful that it was a false alarm. Wow--they're getting things back on track quickly. Thank God the sprinkler system didn't go off--this could've been a lot worse." I don't know--it just puts things in perspective. We expect things to go predictably, and sometimes they don't. And when they don't, do I want to be one of the "This sucks!" people or one of the "At least we're not dead." people.