The search for extinguishing fires and the pulling of bells

Ahah! I had a startling revelation. In all of my busy-ness of school and what not, it suddenly occurred to me that maybe I could count some blog writing for school. Ding! (lightbulb) I put this question to my own dear mother, and she said yes! Oh brilliant am I, am I not? ha ha ha! Now I can occasionally do this (if I practice creative writing in the process) instead of my regular writing for school, which is quite a prospect because I can get two things done at once, though I still need to keep up with other projects. Okay, now, what is it I'm going to write about to make my time worthwhile?

The bibleschool has started in full swing! Ah yes, and it's funny how every year the class seems better than the one before. Not that there was anything wrong with the people in past classes, but somehow you come to enjoy the present people more and more and it seems to grow increasingly interesting. It's a very complicated situation.

Last Tuesday we lacked the benevolent Brandon and Mary to do fellowship meeting, so the load fell onto my dad's shoulders (actually, he probably volunteered). After coming down from a rather sweaty time at sports, everyone discovered that their exercise wasn't done yet. The activity was a scavenger hunt, called Fun With a Purpose. In this game each team received fifteen hypothetical questions that they could answer from the guidebook. This included things like: if you go to the gym and someone else is there who gets first priority, and what do you do when you're watching a TV program with staff permission (any bibleschool alumni have any answers?). This wasn't all, however. Oh no. The other part was that you had to find all of the fire extinguishers and pulls in all of the public buildings at Fairwood, including Fairview. The first team to find all of them, answer the most questions correctly, and have the best time, wins.

Not so easy. The fact remained that my dad didn't know how many fire extinguishers or pulls there were, so it would all depend on the student's accuracy. At this my dad changed his mind, and as I placidly watched the students rush out of the parlor, happy I didn't have to exert such energy, he asked me to help him find them. This meant we would have to rush around trying to beat the students, finding as many as possible. We would go together, or sometimes split up, our eyes scanning every nook and cranny for something red, which would be the giveaway to discovering our desired object. Not only that, but we had to remember where we saw all of them, and give a brief description as to where it would be located. In this manner we went through the garage, dining hall, wood shop, apartment building entryways, women's dorm, men's dorm (yes the whole team of mixed genders was allowed into both the men's and women's dorms!), Main House (sorry Mary, since you weren't there your apartment was included), gym, lodge, church, generator shed, and Fairview.

One of the biggest problems posed for me was the fact that I didn't want to turn on too many lights in various places. This would then attract the attention of undeserving teams that would have never thought of looking where I was, and as I did not have a flash light like the students, I would often grope about in pitch blackness, feeling for the door I knew would come in front of me, or stumbling about for a light switch. More than once the teams mistook me for an enemy team member, and would try to hide their findings from me, until I convinced them that they actually wanted me to see their discoveries. Running about madly from one building to the next, glancing through empty corners or spotting a flash of red, my feet grew tired from the relentless drive in which I was wearing absolutely the wrong shoes to do it in. I volunteered to jog through the dark up to Fairview, occasionally meeting a team, identifiable by the spot of light that a student would be carrying as a beacon. Exhausted, I tip-toed quietly through the dim halls of Fairview, then back into the dark night to return speedily to Daddy, counting and recounting the numbers and locations of all I had found. My last project was searching through the Main House basement, and finally checking under the seat of a gray van to locate the fire extinguisher bonus point. I threw myself down into a chair in the parlor to catch my breath and wait as the students filed back in.

The questions were answered, the numbers totalled, arguments sprung, but in the end the final tally was this: 43 fire extinguishers and 37 pulls, of which my dad and I had found 42 and 34 of. Not bad considering there were two of us and four people on each team. In the end Kimberly's team won, also consisting of Van Lora, Elizabeth, and Andrew. Hurray for the winning members! They received used books from the bookstore as a reward.

And I was thankful that I hadn't gotten to run my mile earlier in the day, because I was tuckered out as it was.