The Stinky Fish

Half way through watching the Muppet's movie today (which is incredible, btw), Adam and I both noted the distinct scent of stinky fish. You know, cheap fish that someone was cooking on their stove. I noted the smell first, saying "do you smell the stinky fish?", to which Adam, being a classic boy, smelled himself to ensure he wasn't the source of the stinky fish. He wasn't. We puzzled over this for a few minutes, but let's face it the Muppets are hilarious and what were we going to do? Find the source of the stinky fish? I think not.

At the end of the movie we heard an announcement coming from the hallway. Something about the Fire Department but we couldn't quite make it out. Adam thought maybe they were imploring our neighbors to throw away the stinky fish. As Adam hung out in the hallway trying to catch the full message I made a mental list of the things to grab if we needed to evacuate. I had it down to 2 things- the wedding photos and the photo hard drive. Living in downtown Chicago really serves to limit the amount of "stuff" one gets attached to- there's just not enough room in a two bedroom place to acquire mounds of junk. I did NOT plan to rescue the stinky fish.



Then I glanced out the window and saw 10 full fire engines and a few cop cars. The firemen were walking away from our driveway in full fire gear so the whole thing looked pretty legit. So we began hypothesizing as to the cause of the fire:

Hypothesis #1 Someone burned their stinky fish

Since we weren't being evacuated, however, we began to consider what else would bring so many emergency personal to our neck of the woods. Since living in Chicago, I've personally witnessed at least 3 would be "jumpers", you know people who poise themselves to jump off building, balconies and interstate overpasses. Again we hypothesized:

Hypothesis #2 Someone's significant other made them such stinky fish that they decided life just wasn't worth living if they were forced to eat such stinky fish

Finally, the fire department announcement replayed, this time saying there had indeed been a fire. It was in the laundry room in the basement and it had been put out successfully. After congratulating myself on having a) not worked out in the gym tonight (it's next to the laundry room and would have been HOT!) and b) having a laundry service so we don't slave away in the laundry room, we contemplated what must be the final answer to the puzzle of how this fire occurred. (Like how I came up with good reasons for being lazy?) Anyhoo, we have the cause of the fire narrowed down to two possibilities:

Hypothesis #3 Someone was washing their clothes after the stinky fish meal stunk them up

Or, our final answer:

Hypothesis #4 Someone was cooking the stinky fish by putting it in the dryer (bringing new meaning to the term tuna roll)

Either way, next time they should try some less stinky fish!