I had an early night on Wednesday. Done at 7pm, hot diggity! Normally I think first of my paycheck and complain. But not Christmas week, oh, heck no.

I arrowed straight to the local Cineplex to see The Hobbit. At long last.

In the back of my mind, a little voice told me: "noooo... go home first...."

I argued with it. "If I go home, I'll stay home. It's a miserable night out. The snow has been rained on and it's cold."

But the little voice persisted: "Go hoooommmmme." I staunchly refused.

The show was at 8:30, so I had just enough time to buy my tickets and grab some Thai (mmmm, peanut sauce...). Finished din-din at exactly 8:30.

I handed the clerk my ticket right when the lights started flashing. Security guards appeared. And the movieplex started to evacuate.

Fire alarm.

Several hundred of us stood in the rain for ten minutes, grumbling and confused. Management tried to shoo us away from the doors. "That was a fire alarm! Get away from the building." (Amusingly, no one could hear him, but they saw his signalling and gathered Closer.) You see, the main thing school fire drills teach us is that it's never a fire.

And it wasn't. A workman in a neighboring health club had been soldering and set it off. Nevertheless, no one knew that at the time, and the movie folks told us it would be another forty-five minutes before they'd reopen.

Forty-five minutes in the rain. Standing in slush.

I attempted a different theatre, but I'd missed it. The next showtime was too late to be feasible.

If I'd listened to that little voice....