The Fire

This is a true story of a man who was nine years old at the time of telling....1

My name is John and I remember the night of the fire like it was yesterday. I was home with my sisters and they had gotten tired of me, so they sent me to bed early. I wanted to read and they wanted me in bed with no light on. I knew how to make a light it was easy really all I needed was some paper, and a place for it. I got a book of matches from my parents room, some paper from a little pad that I had, and an old sneaker that held the paper. It was easy to start a small fire in the sneaker, but the one thing that I hadden't counted on was the matches that I thought were out landing on a sheet and starting to burn. My room quickly filled with smoke. I quickley ran downstairs to get some water and my sisters wanted to know what all that smoke was that was comming from my room. I told them it was nothing,not to worry about it. They ran up the stairs and saw the fire was in my mattress. They tried to extinguish it but it was only smoldering. My room had too much smoke for me to sleep in so they had me come downstairs and sleep in one of thier rooms. 2

Later that night the dog woke us up by barking she was waking us up because of the smoke. My sisters got her and me out of the houseand over to the neighbors house where they tried to wake somebody up. They were unable yo wake anybody up, so they went down the street to a family friend where they found thier parents and told them what was happining.They quickley called the fire department and they arrived a short time later. 3

John goes on to say that his room was destroyed along with a small bathroom. He tells this story to this day in the hopes that one day sombody will hear his words, and refrain from causing a fire. To this day he knows how lucky he was that there was a bed for him somewhere else in the house, because if there wasn't he would have surley died that horrable night.