The age old question...

When the fire alarm goes off in the middle of the night, what will I do? What will my first thoughts be? Will I take something with me, or just flee? Where will I go?

Allow me to answers those questions for you.

I will, when the alarm goes off at 3 a.m., wonder why my fan is making such a horrible noise. I will, after pursuing this line of thought for several seconds, determine that perhaps the sound is not, in fact, my fan. With my vast deductive powers, I will conclude that perhaps the sound is coming from outside my room, and will open the door to the skull-splitting shriek in the hall.

Having confirmed that the noise is not my fan, I will grab my camera bag, shove my laptop and birth certificate (probably so they can ID me if I collapse on the ground outside after running down two flights of stairs... the logic of this act escapes me a bit) into it and take off. I will also put on a bra and a sweatshirt, because otherwise I would just be wearing white tae kwon do pants and a camo Ralph Lauren t-shirt.

I will move downstairs, stopping my flip-flop clad feet only to let two firemen pass by. I will not take their picture inside the hotel, and this will irritate me later.

When I arrive downstairs, I will see my editor, camera in hand, and realize I am not the first photograher on the scene. I will rue the fact I did not shoot the firemen inside, as that would have given me a great angle. Yes, in spite of the possibility of my belongings burning to the ground, I will think only of the pictures I did not take. This is an illness of which I fear I will never be cured.

One might wonder how I can say, with such certainty, how I would act in such a situation. I would answer my doubters thusly: Because it is exactly what I did at 3 a.m.