Where Mute Memories Start Talking

I’m not even joking when I say this: I have a horrible fear of fire alarms. Fire drills are like 10 minutes of hell for me, and I sincerely wish that popcorn was banned from residence halls, since burning popcorn always seems to set off the smoke detectors. All through elementary school, I used to dread the four days of the year that we had fire drills. I even remember pretending to be sick one day during fourth grade, as by that point I had learned that drill #1 always took place on the first Friday of the year.

Even in high school, those alarms continued to scare the crap out of me. It didn’t help that my high school has what is quite possibly the loudest and most startling alarm in existence, with a horn located in every single classroom. I remember during the first week of my freshman year, my English teacher informed us that a drill was about to take place. She told us to sit quietly and wait for the alarm to sound, then to leave the room and head out to the field. Since I didn’t know what the alarm sounded like, I was relatively calm, given that I was sitting in absolute silence awaiting the sound of a device designed to cause one to spring into action during an emergency.

Needless to say, I was scared shitless at the moment that damn horn went off. From that point forward, I was horrified by silence in classrooms, since I knew the alarm was definitely going to sound during those moments. Luckily for me, my school started publishing the fire drill dates ahead of time, so I could at least prepare for the damage instead of being startled and paranoid by its potential. There was definitely one time where I was late to class on purpose though, since I happened to sit right underneath the horn in that particular class.

So… guess what happened today? That’s right, my dormitory had a fire drill. It happened at about 7PM while I was sitting on this very computer downloading some music (don’t tell anyone who works for ResNet about that). Instead of the low-pitched buzzer sound of alarms past, this one is high and shrill. It wasn’t particularly startling, but the alarms in the hallway were so loud that they literally hurt my ears, as in I felt a sharp pain in my inner ear. Fun stuff.

There is an alarm in my room, but it didn’t seem like it was as loud as the ones outside and in the hallway. For me, it’s definitely going to make falling asleep more difficult than it should be. One thing’s for sure, in college those things don’t save your life. The false alarm to real alarm ratio is probably more than 2 million to one (when’s the last time you heard about a college dormitory burning to the ground?). So this is my ode to my greatest fear, and here’s to hoping we don’t have any false alarms this year. Any suggestions, words of encouragement, or criticisms are welcomed.