Ever smelled burning popcorn? Eeeeeewwwwww

There are a few smells worse than burnt popcorn, none of which I care to describe here. But it's the burning popcorn smell that poured down the hallways in Park late this afternoon, after a particular student (who shall remain nameless) managed to torch a bag of microwave popcorn in a particular corner of the Park School (that shall remain nameless) and voila!

Firetrucks!

I, of course, was up in my office doing email (what else?) when the fire alarms started to blare out in the hallways. That happened a few weeks ago, and I was the last one out of the building (yes, it's true, my entire staff hightailed it out of the dean's office and nobody bothered to knock on my door to be sure I'd heard the alarm...should I be taking that personally?).

So this time, I jumped up and trotted down the stairs and out the door, where a bunch of students were shivering in the cold (at least it wasn't raining...). It didn't take long before we were allowed to reenter the building...and then the alarms went off again (smoke: it's hard to get rid of...).

Long story, anticlimactic ending. After everybody huddled for a few more shivery minutes on the sidewalk, the fire guys opened the doors and the students went back to their business as usual. The firetrucks went away and the student who started the whole thing went back to his media, having learned the lesson the hard way:

It doesn't take five minutes to pop popcorn. No matter what it says on the bag.