Saturday, September 8, 2012

Rude Awakenings

I woke up this morning to an unholy screeching coming from the hallway outside me door.

What on earth is that sound? I wondered.

Is that...is that the fire alarm?  At two in the morning?  

And it was, indeed, the fire alarm, clamoring it's little heart out at 2:14 this morning.

Oh, HECK no, I thought to myself, this is just cruel.  This is a terrible time for a fire drill.

Which, you know, it's great to know that if the fire alarm goes off in the middle of the night, I'm just going to assume that it's a fire drill and not actually a fire or any sort of threat to my safety.

I have half a mind to just stay in bed right now out of spite. (Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.  I'm glad to know that if my dorm actually catches on fire in the middle of the night, I would rather burn alive in my bed than get up.)  It will probably stop ringing after a while.

But it didn't.  It just kept ringing and ringing, mocking my suffering and my futile attempts to thwart it's noisy powers.

So, eventually, I got up.  For some reason, I had the presence of mind to take my headphones out of my ears, but not to take off my bite splint, which, if we are being honest with each other, should really never ever be worn where other people can see you.

Anyway, I got up, put on my flip flops, and grabbed my keys, because it has been ingrained in my memory that you should always have your keys with you if you leave the dorm.

Now, granted, they've also drilled into our heads that we should always have our I.D.s with us, too, but I keep forgetting that one.

So, I put on my flippy floppies in the dark, grabbed my keys out of my purse, and braced to open the door.

It was like I had opened the gates of Hell itself.

There was just light, like, everywhere.  Seriously, just all up in my grill.  Oh, and the noise, the noise.  It was so loud.  I covered my ears with my hands like a wuss.  That's how loud it was.

And then, I was so disoriented, I almost forgot that there was a fire escape route, like, right outside my door, and I almost tried to go out the front door, and then I'm like "no, this isn't right" and then I remembered the fire escape route, and so I went down the stares and out the fire door, directly beneath the screechy siren.

It was so loud, you guys, you have no idea.

And then I trudged up the hill outside like a zombie to go stand where some of my friends were, just feeling so glamorous in my old t-shirt and flannel pajama pants (yes, I was wearing flannel in September.  Yes, I'm very well aware that it is still too hot for flannel.  If I had any shorts, I would have worn those to bed, but I don't, so quit judging me.)

And then we all just stood around there, waiting for someone to shut the alarm off, and then there's just some random group of dudes across the street from us, and I'm just like, why are you even here?

Anyway, eventually, they got the alarm shut off, and we all got to go back to bed, but I could not fall back asleep for another hour and a half, for some reason.  I spent most of that hour and a half thinking about how there should be stronger penalties and higher fees for setting off the alarm at night as opposed to setting it off during the day.

I still don't know how it got set off.  I don't think I ever will.  The one thing I do know, though, is that fire alarms hate sleep, and I'm more than willing to burn to death if my dorm catches fire in the middle of the night.

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