Not too long ago, a friend and I were eating dinner and the fire alarm went off. There were no obvious signs of smoke and while several patrons left and headed out the door none of the employees did, so we waited. Now, of course, this was not the wisest course of action. After all, fires and other emergencies often move faster than you can perceive them, which is why fire alarms exist. But I think we've all reached at state of alarm ennui. Car alarms. Store security alarms go off so frequently that half the time even the security guard seems to wave, too tired to figure out why it's been set off. I watched one employee head into the back, and return with the alarm still going. At that point my friend and I decided to leave partly, I confess, because it was really noisy in there. Other establishments (although not all) already had employees and patrons out on the sidewalk. And yet we still found a nice bench to chat, finish up dinner, and watch the fire trucks go by. (They left pretty quickly, so hopefully all was well all along.)
Rants About New (and old) Things
