In Case of Fire: Childhood Confusion

My sisters and I were taking a leisurely trip into the booming metropolis of Rexburg when we saw a sign on the side of the road:
"DO NOT PASS"
My 11-year old sister said that she used to think that it meant you couldn't pass the sign. This obviously made me laugh, but it's because I USED TO THINK THE SAME THING. Like, why do they even have road past the sign if you can't pass it anyways? I'd say, "We passed the DO NOT PASS sign!" and Mom acted like it wasn't even a big deal (appalled face)!

Of course, this was not the only area in which I found myself particularly... well, blonde...
I have always had a fear of being caught unprepared in a fire... Sometimes irrationally. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Paepke, may she rest in peace, had a tub full of pillows in the back of the room and when your turn came to be "vice president", you got to take your shoes off and spend the afternoon in the claw tub reading or whatever. But while most kids looked forward to spending time in there, I was frightened of the concept. I was just SURE that while I was in there, a fire would erupt and I would have to get out of the tub and out of the building without my shoes on. I had this fear that my feet would somehow burst into flames or that I'd be stuck standing in the snow barefoot while my alma mater incinerated. Yup... That was me as a child. lol

In my elementary school there were fire alarms all over. Well, instead of reading "Pull in case of fire", they said "Pull for fire". I was petrified of even going near them because I thought if I pulled it, it would START a fire. Childhood nightmares are woven by such misconceptions.

When I got older (and over my fear of the fire alarms), I saw something else that caught my attention. It was a fire extinguisher in a case that had written on the outside, "In case of fire, break glass with shoe". On the surface this is a wonderful idea. It keeps people from punching the glass and getting glass shards all up in their fists in a panic. But you KNOW there's gotta be that one daft guy who, instead of kicking the glass, actually takes his shoe off to bust into it. This leaves him with more problems than he started out with. He doesn't have a shoe on anymore, for one thing, AND there's glass all over the floor, AND there's still a fire in the building, AND he has to figure out how to use the fire extinguisher while simultaneously trying to put his shoe back on. I just hope I'm not the one in the claw tub in THAT building when it catches fire. lol