So, one moment I'm sound asleep in my bed in Tuscaloosa, and the next...
...I'm standing in the parking area under our building looking at these cop cars. 2:16 AM. Yep.
There is nothing like the sound of a fire alarm. It is loud, piercing, and very annoying. Much more so than even my very annoying cell phone alarm clock. That's what you want of course, because you want to wake up. When there's a fire.
But there was no fire last night. Instead, one of my building neighbors was involved in a domestic dispute. As we stood under the building, she explained to the police that she didn't have a phone and so she pulled the fire alarm to get the police to come.
It worked. And I learned something: the police cannot turn off the fire alarm. We had to wait for the fire department to arrive, and they had to inspect the building before we could go back inside.
So I was back asleep by 3 AM. Was that a dream?
Nah...just another night at the edge of a college campus. Never a dull moment.
Heh ... back in the dorm at UA, the fire alarm went off one evening during ... midterms or finals ... heavy studying and occasional survival sleep going on ... everyone prairie-dogged out of their rooms, people hollared up and down the stair wells "Hey, y'all got a fire?" and then went back to the books or precious sleep.
ReplyDeleteTurned out it was an official fire drill. Of the 10 or so people out of 100 who actually left the dorm, the ranking "officer" was the social chairman. The Fire Mershal was very upset and said that he was going to do it again ... and again if necessary until we "responded properly." The social chairman advised him to call for some policemen if he was serious, as it was pretty sure that a second fire alarm (absent an actual fire) would result in a lynch mob.
The Marshall left and we never had another fire drill while I was there.