My brother and I were both trying to stomp out the flames, except the rug would stick to our shoes and rip off the floor, causing us to have burning carpet trying to lick up our pant-legs. Rick was trying to smother it with a pillow, which was not working either. .
I kept laughing, not because this was funny, but because by now I had gone into some sort of shock, and couldn't even think straight. The fire had spread even more and by now the smoke detectors were screaming. Wayne finally came to his senses and yelled to me "Kim, go get a wet towel!" thinking we could smother the flames with water. I ran upstairs to drench a towel, bumping into my dad on the way there. He asked me what was going on, but I just had a blank mind. I couldn't think of what to say either for my brother's sake or I was still in shock. I did manage to mumble, "uhhh Wayne's paints are on fire," but that was all I could say. After running the towel under the water, I ran back downstairs and tried to smother the fire, only the towel was also caught in the flames. Thankfully, my dad was levelheaded and came down with a bucket of water and doused the fire. He then proceeded to rip the smoke detectors out of the ceiling and interrogate us about what happened.
At first he was furious. He told Wayne that he would have to buy a new rug for his room and was even becoming angry with myself, although I had done nothing. I kept yelling at him to calm down, that I would take care of things and fix the smoke detectors. After everyone calmed down, we joked about it a little bit, probably out of relief that nothing more serious had happened except a hole in the rug and a couple of burnt shoes. I went upstairs to talk to my father, and see how he was feeling. I tried to explain to him that it was all right, it was just a rug and that we were lucky that no one was injured and nothing else was ruined. What he told me made me think afterwards on the drive to my friend's condo: "Yeah, but we might not all be here right now.
