Smelling smoke
Jan. 4th, 2014 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
violetcheetahThere are two main aspects to my job at the USPS; people work in two-person teams on each machine, with one person "feeding" unsorted mail into the machine, and the other person "sweeping" the sorted mail out of the "stackers," which are arranged in four rows of 50 to 75 columns, looking kind of like a big wall of PO boxes, only with little flip-up gates instead of doors. You sweep the mail from each stacker as it starts to get full, which sounds simple, but depending on the type of sorting the machine is doing, and the mail you get, the stackers may fill up in sudden and unpredictable ways: stacker 15 fills up, and you empty it and 10 seconds later stacker 119 halfway down the big machine fills up, and so on. That's the type of mail we usually run on my shift. But Sunday night at work, Finness and I were running "first-pass" mail, which usually has stackers all filling up slowly and steadily at the same time, and sweeping is pretty methodical and mellow, especially for the first half hour, when about all the sweeper does is clear the occasional (or not-so-occasional, depending) jam. The lack of anything to do usually drives me crazy and I'd rather feed, but Sunday I went with it, and Finness and I were just generally talking and joking as he fed, and the machine jammed, so I strolled about a third of the way down the machine to deal with it. And I smelled smoke. Not burning rubber from one of the many belts, but wood smoke, or paper. This does happen sometimes, if a piece of mail gets caught somewhere and doesn't cause an actual jam: not actual fire, of course, but enough friction to blacken the paper. But not that often. And this was pretty strong.
So, one of the things my father used to do when drunk was threaten to burn down the house with us in it. I used to be terrified of fire, and yet compelled to watch when we burned burnable trash, because otherwise I'd spend the time while the fire was burning worrying about it going out of control. I needed to watch and be prepared. So that was going on in my head at work, smelling this: a desire to run before the house burned down, but also needing to know what it was, where it was, to figure it out and fix it and stop something bad from happening. Of course, in the present, nothing bad was going to happen. A piece of paper getting so hot from just friction that it bursts into flames? No, I knew that wasn't going to happen. But the smell, and the not-knowingness, triggered an adrenaline dump and a need to do — if not to run, than to stay and rectify.
I couldn't identify the spot it was coming from, partly because of the overhead fans blowing, maybe; all I could tell at first was it was somewhere in the middle third. I discounted the last third or so of that, because the fans would have wafted the smokey smell that direction. So I started at the far end of where I thought the smoke could be coming from, clearing the stackers of mail. I started at stacker 130, and worked my way forward, up one 4-row column, down the next. It was getting stronger. Eventually I was pretty sure it wasn't on the bottom row, because the smell wasn't as strong when I bent close enough that the ceiling of that row was inches from my head. A couple more columns up, I was sure it wasn't the next-lowest of the four rows. But I kept clearing all the rows because they needed clearing, anyway, and because I needed that methodicality to feel like I was in control, I think: no emergency here, no urgency, just doing the job like normal. Then I got to stacker 52, and I found a flyer, flimsy like a small sale bill, with the edge caught under a belt, but in such a way that the belt could still turn, just kept grinding away at the paper. I got Finness to stop the machine and I pulled the paper out, its edge charred, with a drop of congealed... Ink? Lamination? I don't know... brown-black stuff on one corner. I'd found it. I took it up to the feeder; Finness marveled at its condition; it was done.
And then the terror hit. He knew from a previous conversation we'd had about my issues with fire, and he's seen me melt down way more than I was doing now, so it wasn't surprising, and I didn't have to do anything as far as working, so I stood and let my hands spasm until the run of mail on that machine was done, and then we moved on to another machine, and I said, essentially, I'm going to sit down, on the floor, and it doesn't mean I'm freaking out any more than when I'm standing, I just need to be sitting. So I sat, and grasped my shoulder where it vibrates, and I was jumpy but okay, so I just stayed like that, still not understanding why I'd delayed freaking out until the smoke was done. Then I realized what I'd been thinking while I was looking for the source of the smell, even while I wasn't consciously aware of thinking it:
I'm imagining it. I'm making it up. There's nothing here, I'm being a drama queen, just pretending there's something here to get attention, and convincing my own self at the same time so I won't have to admit I'm pretending. I was actually so sure of this that I convinced myself so thoroughly that there wasn't anything there, that when I saw the paper, I still didn't entirely believe it. I had to show Finness and see his reaction to be sure it was real, and when it was real, that was so at odds with what I believed that I... The world was not what I thought it was, and it was terrifying. Even though I was right. I was so sure I was wrong that when I was presented with objective evidence that I wasn't wrong, I nearly lost track of the present because of the cognitive dissonance.
So, one of the things my father used to do when drunk was threaten to burn down the house with us in it. I used to be terrified of fire, and yet compelled to watch when we burned burnable trash, because otherwise I'd spend the time while the fire was burning worrying about it going out of control. I needed to watch and be prepared. So that was going on in my head at work, smelling this: a desire to run before the house burned down, but also needing to know what it was, where it was, to figure it out and fix it and stop something bad from happening. Of course, in the present, nothing bad was going to happen. A piece of paper getting so hot from just friction that it bursts into flames? No, I knew that wasn't going to happen. But the smell, and the not-knowingness, triggered an adrenaline dump and a need to do — if not to run, than to stay and rectify.
I couldn't identify the spot it was coming from, partly because of the overhead fans blowing, maybe; all I could tell at first was it was somewhere in the middle third. I discounted the last third or so of that, because the fans would have wafted the smokey smell that direction. So I started at the far end of where I thought the smoke could be coming from, clearing the stackers of mail. I started at stacker 130, and worked my way forward, up one 4-row column, down the next. It was getting stronger. Eventually I was pretty sure it wasn't on the bottom row, because the smell wasn't as strong when I bent close enough that the ceiling of that row was inches from my head. A couple more columns up, I was sure it wasn't the next-lowest of the four rows. But I kept clearing all the rows because they needed clearing, anyway, and because I needed that methodicality to feel like I was in control, I think: no emergency here, no urgency, just doing the job like normal. Then I got to stacker 52, and I found a flyer, flimsy like a small sale bill, with the edge caught under a belt, but in such a way that the belt could still turn, just kept grinding away at the paper. I got Finness to stop the machine and I pulled the paper out, its edge charred, with a drop of congealed... Ink? Lamination? I don't know... brown-black stuff on one corner. I'd found it. I took it up to the feeder; Finness marveled at its condition; it was done.
And then the terror hit. He knew from a previous conversation we'd had about my issues with fire, and he's seen me melt down way more than I was doing now, so it wasn't surprising, and I didn't have to do anything as far as working, so I stood and let my hands spasm until the run of mail on that machine was done, and then we moved on to another machine, and I said, essentially, I'm going to sit down, on the floor, and it doesn't mean I'm freaking out any more than when I'm standing, I just need to be sitting. So I sat, and grasped my shoulder where it vibrates, and I was jumpy but okay, so I just stayed like that, still not understanding why I'd delayed freaking out until the smoke was done. Then I realized what I'd been thinking while I was looking for the source of the smell, even while I wasn't consciously aware of thinking it:
I'm imagining it. I'm making it up. There's nothing here, I'm being a drama queen, just pretending there's something here to get attention, and convincing my own self at the same time so I won't have to admit I'm pretending. I was actually so sure of this that I convinced myself so thoroughly that there wasn't anything there, that when I saw the paper, I still didn't entirely believe it. I had to show Finness and see his reaction to be sure it was real, and when it was real, that was so at odds with what I believed that I... The world was not what I thought it was, and it was terrifying. Even though I was right. I was so sure I was wrong that when I was presented with objective evidence that I wasn't wrong, I nearly lost track of the present because of the cognitive dissonance.