Hot Philosophers

Perhaps with a headline like this, you might think that the staff of Philosophers on Holiday was offering a new swimsuit edition of our publication. We’re not.

My office and Lisa’s are in different buildings, and her's is closer to the place where we usually park. This means that I walk over to her office, and we head out together with her locking her office door and the philosophy department office. One rainy day, I was bundled up in my raincoat and backpack, assuming that I would be in her building for only a minute or so. But Lisa needed another minute or two to pack up her things, so I was left standing around cooling my heels for a while. While she was locking up her office, she suddenly noticed a burning smell. I don’t have much of a sense of smell, so I took her word for it at first, but soon even I could smell it.

The philosophy department is housed in the oldest building on campus, so there is some legitimate basis for concern when there is a burning smell. Lisa, convinced that this could be serious, called Safety and Security, who responded that they would send someone over "in a while."

While we were waiting for Safety and Security to arrive, Lisa and I were busily sniffing around. We went outside the building, in the event that someone standing outside was smoking, their fumes carried into the building on a stiff westerly wind. Then Lisa went downstairs to the Classics Department, because we saw enough fire prevention film-strips in elementary school to know that smoke rises. But, in the event of some weird barometric pressure variable, we also went upstairs to the education department. Lisa also went next door to the suite of religion department offices, in the event that someone over there was doing something involving incense. We were stumped; none of these was the source of the burning odor. In the course of our fire investigation, we were joined by several of our Gustavus colleagues (a meeting had let out across the hallway). All assembled agreed that there definitely was a burning odor, more specifically the burning odor of paper. An officer from Safety and Security arrived, opened all the office doors, and discovered nothing.

By this time, there were at least eight people in the very tiny office. We all agreed that, yes, indeed, it smelled like burning paper. The smell was quite strong; I particularly noticed it when I was near the computer printer. The printer as source of the smell seemed plausible; printers have been known to misbehave in all sorts of stupid ways and this one was loaded with a lot of paper. As I was saying how strong the odor was, one colleague mused aloud if the smell might be coming from someone’s clothing—a raincoat perhaps that had recently been out on a camping trip. Well, Lisa had worn my raincoat on a canoe trip (see Vol IV, number 2) and it had been quite smoky when she brought it back. But no, that wasn’t the smell. Another colleague warned me in a joking way that perhaps I might be combustible. And at that moment, I knew.

"It is me!" I whelped, as I whipped off my backpack. I unzipped it, and a plume of smoke curled out. I reached in—and grabbed out a smoldering spiral notebook; it was charred all the way through. I quickly doused it under the handy Culligan water dispenser.

At this point, the assembled crowd was wondering what the heck was going on. Just how did I come to have a fire on my back?

In a word, batteries. Yes, batteries for outdoor rechargeable solar lights in my backpack. (Don’t ask about those lights right now; they are another story, for "Consumer Complaints" section of a future edition.) The metal spiral on the notebook had connected the positive and negative terminals, and Bob’s your uncle. In fifteen minutes, we had smoldering and charring. Half of my paycheck stub was gone.

I was teaching logic when this happened, and it gave me a whole new way to explain the usefulness of logic (something in addition to its fulfilling a general education credit and the other reasons I trot out at the beginning of every semester). I reached the conclusion I did by deduction. The smell was concentrated in one area. And everywhere that Peggy went, the smell was sure to go. I was the source of the smell.

My conclusion had nothing to do with my back getting hot. It was only after I had taken off the backpack and raincoat that I realized how hot my back had become during the search.

I don’t need to say that news travels like wildfire in a small community. That evening, I received an anonymous telephone call from someone making the sounds of fire engines. The next day one of my students brought a fire extinguisher to class. The administrative assistant in my building left a badge for me to wear (complete with clothespin), warning people that I carry fire. And when the fire alarm went off in my building, that same administrative assistant demanded to know my whereabouts.

Things have cooled down since then.