While Your House is on Fire

Hey neighbor, your house is on fire!

I'll call the fire department!

But hold on, wait a minute...

The road out here has a few potholes. We wouldn't want the fire engines to hit one too hard and break an axle on the way...we'd better get that road fixed first...

We should look at how they build those axles, too. They should build stronger axles that don't break, especially for fire engines!

Come to think of it, our fire engines are pretty old. They might not even get here at all! We'd better buy some new ones...

But you know, fire engines have been red for a long time. But I know some places have yellow ones. I wonder if those yellow ones work better. I think they say you can see yellow from further away than red, after all. We'd better do a study on the effects on the psyche of people responding to red vs. yellow fire trucks to make sure we know what's best before we place that order...

What's that you say? Help you fill some buckets with water?

Sure thing neighbor!

Well, wait...I don't want to use a plastic bucket, because of the fire and all. It might melt. I better go get my old metal bucket. Except it's kind of rusty, actually. We don't want rusty water, it could be bad for the environment.

Speaking of the environment, you know asphalt has a lot of oil in it. So we probably don't want to fix the road out here with any asphalt. We better make sure we figure out something else to fix the road with before we start that...

Come to think of it, we better make sure we only get new fire engines that are electric. Those things are huge! They must use a ton of gas...or diesel...or something...either way they use too much oil! And all that exhaust...think of all that gross carbon dioxide! Yeah, they better be electric...

You know, doesn't your other neighbor, Jimmy make electric motors? Even better! He'll have some great work ahead of him figuring out how to make an electric motor for a fire engine! Well, unless somebody else gets the job instead. We better make sure that only electric motor makers in this town can get the job of making electric fire engine motors. That'll do the trick!

What's that you say? Now Jimmy's house is on fire too?

Well how did that happen? With all this work we're doing to put out your fire, and it just jumps over to Jimmy's house! How crazy is that?!

Man, you know I read a study once that if every house had its own fire sprinkler system, house fires would have a lot lower chance of jumping from house to house. After we get this thing put out we should make it so that you have to get a fire sprinkler system so that if you have another fire, Jimmy's house won't catch on fire, too.

What's that you say? Grab a shovel?

Why would I need a shovel to put out a fire?

You say I'm not putting out a fire?

Well then what's it for?

Cleanup? Why would I clean up if I'm trying to help you put out a fire?

The fire's out?

Well that's great!

Wait....

Where'd your house go?!