How We Almost Died Today - True Story

“Wake up!… Wake up!... The house is full of gas and we have to leave now!” Sarah insisted.

My head was pounding as I struggled to open my eyes and all I could see were red flashes of light. So, I muttered: “It will be fine, just let me go back to sleep!”

I had only been asleep for about two hours and I was trying to sleep off an awful, gas induced, migraine, but that was impossible due to Sarah’s persistent nagging and the smell of rotting onions. So, I reluctantly got up and began dressing at a slower pace than I probably should have.

Sarah had already opened all the windows and she was pestering me to hurry up and lead the way to the back yard. Every time I approached a light switch while stumbling through the thick gas, I heard Sarah barking orders: “Don’t turn the lights on or you’ll blow up the house!” but honestly, this only made me want to flip the switches even more.

While outside, I began to realize that Sarah had no idea of how to handle this situation and I needed to take charge. I knew that the best solution was for me to go back in; bundle my coat up real tight, Kenny-style and then light my lighter, so, the gas would instantly ignite and burn itself out, sending flames all around me, while my coat kept me safe.

I tried to explain this solution to Sarah and I even explained how the house wouldn’t explode since all the windows were open, but since Sarah is a goodie-two-shoes, she refused to allow me to clean the gas out.

Instead, she wanted us to stand out in the cold, theorizing on why we even had a gas leak. She said that the gas stemmed from the gas hub and somehow the knob was turned on while we slept. Which means that the rat, that lives somewhere in our kitchen, is trying to kill us.

While peering back into the house, I began to wonder why our countless electrical devices had not ignited the gas while we slept, but I began to notice that none of our lights were on and then it dawned on me: our power was cut off.

In British ghettos, some houses have pay-as-you-go gas and power meters which use a USB-like key that people take to the store and since Sarah forgot to prepay ours, the house didn’t explode. Also, another saving grace was that two days earlier our gas boiler broke, again: plunging us deep into the long-winter: where the night is dark and full of terrors.

It’s insane, our lives were literally saved due to a string of bad luck!

As I walked back into the house to sniff for gas, I saw a British Gas van parking in front of our house, so, I quickly yelled out to Sarah: “Someone turned us in, the gas man is here, what do we do now?”

“They’re just here to fix the boiler… Oh shit!... He can’t fix anything until we get the power back on!” Sarah exclaimed.

In that moment, I realized the gas man was probably walking into his nightmare scenario: a house full of gas; no power; no heat and me: a smelly foreigner that has just huffed way too much gas. I immediately began to hide in order to avoid deportation and to give Sarah a chance to use her feminine charms: Jedi-mind-tricking the gas man into not reporting us for accidentally creating a house-bomb.

I have a feeling that we had opted out of middle class living some time ago, I don’t even think this is middle class for Britain. Sarah claims it is, but I can’t imagine that the Queen or even a Spice Girl is forced to pull an Anne Frank: hiding inside a wardrobe, every time the gas man shows up.

British-people-problems, am I right?