Illustration by Helena Warner
Last Friday, M-A burned to the ground after no one realized it was on fire. Although the fire alarms at school are completely functional, instruction continued as normal until people began noticing fire in their classrooms.
Senior Timothy Zachary said, “Everyone thought it was a false alarm as usual, but turns out it was a false false alarm. Oops.” This was the fourth fire alarm that went off during the week. Most students continued working on their assignments, with some covering their ears to block out the noise. Junior Amber Lowe said, “Honestly, I kinda look forward to the fire alarm going off. The repetitive beeping really helps me get in the zone.” In the music room, band teacher Brent Murrus used the fire alarm as a metronome to keep everyone on beat.
Even as smoke began to fill the air, Lowe’s teacher continued the lesson. She recalled one of her classmates saying, “These drills are getting more realistic every time!” When another student tried to evacuate, they reported their teacher saying, “The fire alarm doesn’t dismiss you, I do” and proceeding to assign extra homework.
The cause of the fire has been determined to be an explosion in the chemistry room after they attempted to light a Hot Cheeto on fire. Chemistry teacher Pat Bandora chose not to call the office, saying it could ruin the experiment and disturb other classes. M-A’s administration stated in an email to the community that they would use the budget reserved for mental health to work towards rebuilding the school. “We plan to install alarms with more aggressive noise and put more pull-down mechanisms so people can signal emergencies without wasting valuable time. I can say with confidence that we are the safest we’ve ever been.” The school is currently burned to the ground, but construction will begin shortly. Until then, M-A students will return to Zoom instruction.
Not sure why this was flagged satire, this is about right.