Fighting Fire with Fire

- a freak fire too close to home

Half past midnight, I sat at my computer editing a chapter of a manuscript that featured a dozen mentally retarded clients exiting their home on a fire drill. Both a writer’s block and a fierce electrical storm quickly moved into the area. Afraid of literary failure and a lightning strike, I shut down the computer to retire for the night.

I no sooner laid down into bed when all hell broke loose. A noise on the rooftop first dismissed as a rain of frogs turned out to be the thud of hailstones. A simultaneous crack of lightning and thunder got my wife out of bed to look around. Soon sirens could be heard in the distance. When my wife cracked a bedroom window and smelled smoke, I knew this was not the fictional fire drill I labored to pen. The sights and sounds of a firetruck going passed our house finally rustled me out of bed. I went to the backyard to see if our woods had caught fire. Nothing. By now firetrucks from three neighboring towns occupied our small cul de sac. My wife and I ventured out the front door to look around. I didn’t have far to look. I witnessed amber flames spilling out the roof of our neighbor’s house. By now, concerned neighbors scurried about in their pajamas.

Lightning had made a direct strike on a kid’s bedroom, in what an eyewitness described as a freaky horizontal bolt that jetted sideways across the sky. Everyone got out of the struck house alive but the children barely escaped injury. Frightened by the hailstones dropping on the roof, the children scurried to their parent’s bedroom right before lightning paid a visit. Thank goodness.

Storm gone and fire extinguished, the inspiration I lacked in editing the like subject matter returned to pay dividends onto my page. Sometimes you have to wait for enlightenment to fight fire with fire.