zzzzzzzzzzzz 11 July 1998

Last night at about 5:30 am, the fire alarm in the building went off. I tried ignoring it, as usual - the smoke detectors in here are ridiculous. You can't take a shower or use the oven without setting them off. And they're not the standard cheapo pull-out-the-battery kind, either. They're wired right into the house current, and one unexpectedly thrilling attempt was enough to teach me that there's no way to turn them off. LOUD LOUD LOUD.

But this wasn't just one of the individual apartment alarms - this was the whole shebang school bell alarm in the hallway. I swear it probably woke up people on the whole block. Not that anyone would ever think, "Uh oh, something's on fire." Fire alarms like this are like car alarms - nobody pays the slightest bit of real attention to them.

Well, or so I thought. After a few minutes, someone knocked at my door. I tried ignoring that too, but then I heard a voice saying "Has anyone seen him?" and I knew they meant *me*. They actually thought I might be lying passed out overcome by smoke or something. Despite the obvious lack of such. How odd. But it was clear I needed to make an appearance, so I put on a pair of pants and went out into the hallway.

There to find what looked like nearly everyone in the building on their way outside. A fire drill! My god, I *was* back in elementary school, no wonder that bell sounded familiar.

Since it really was 5:30 in the morning, thus cold and dark out, nobody actually spent much time out on the sidewalk as such. We were all standing around in the lobby with the door open, my neighbors speculating on who they hadn't been able to find - the missing victim. Finally one of the last people from the 2nd (top) floor stuck his head down the stairwell and told them that everyone up there was fine, thanks.

Meanwhile I was looking in the alarm box for some way to shut that goddamned BELL off. I finally found a handwritten note that had been taped inside - "Remove red wire from terminal 14." Cool. Bomb squad. "The blue wire?" "NO! NO! The red - " But no kaboom, I just pulled the wire out and the bell stopped. The ringing stopped soon thereafter...

No smoke. No flames. Of *course* there was no fire. Alarms don't mean anything any more, they just like to go off. We all hung out for a little bit while my neighbors tried to figure out why it had gone off. "I smell a lot of cigarette smoke," said with a nice touch of transmuted anti-Communist zeal. I didn't think there'd be any point in telling him that he was probably just smelling me.

You know, of course, that this means we're all going to burn to death now.

Willfully blind self-indulgent nebbish or amusingly quirky old coot? And how bout that local sports team? Discuss among yourselves.

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