I couldn’t sleep last night. It may have had something to do with the nap I took that began at 7:30 pm. At any rate, I found myself unhappily awake at 2 am, having tossed and turned for awhile, read awhile, stewed awhile. It was quiet, and aside from the incredibly rude amber streetlight poised directly opposite my bedroom window, it was dark.
I was surprised then to hear the alarm for the volunteer for department go off. Do they have these things where you live? I’m still not used to them after living in this state for, what is it now, almost 17 years. They’re this huge klaxon-thing impaled atop a tall pole, strategically placed around each rural-type town, reminiscent of something out of The Prisoner, that goes off with much loud sirening from time to time to purportedly alert the all-volunteer fire force.
I’m thinking that it might be time to upgrade the system maybe, to make it compatible with, say, 1995? Is that too much to ask? Do not these fire men have, I don’t know, telephones? Beepers? Do we still need to alert the entire town, so we can all stand out there handing buckets down the line while dressed in our nightshirts?
Anyway, so my thought at the time was, Oh what a bummer for the fire guys getting hauled out of bed at 2 am. And then I had a little thought about wondering whether the sound would wake me if I had actually been asleep, and if it really woke the fire guys, which led to a whole if-a-tree-falls-in-the-forest-does-it-make-a-sound-if-there’s-no-one-there-to-hear-it thing, and then I sort of forgot about it.
Until ten minutes later when I heard a siren not too far away and then saw flashing lights outside my window.
Fire trucks! Right outside! Big ones! With lights!
I crouched by the window which was opened slightly because the faux-spring warmth had made it a little stuffy in the room, and I could hear what the fire guys said better that way too, and watched and listened. My primary concern (yes, I may have been hyperventilating. a little) was that they weren’t heading to the House of Ex across the street where the children were supposedly lying asleep, in which case I would have been out the door in 0.8 seconds.
But no. Across the street from me, but not at the House of Ex.
After a while (about 2.1 minutes) I tired of straining to hear what the fire guys were talking about as they stood around in the flashing glow of their truck’s strobe lights which reflected oddly against the windows of the buildings. They were standing around because there didn’t seem to be a fire, nor did they seem to be carrying people out to ambulances, so I wondered: domestic dispute? Crank call? False alarm?
Eventually they all went away and took their annoying red lights with them, and I was left alone again in the semi-dark, listening to the sound of the gentle rain that had begun dripping. The cats came and sniffed at the open window, straining for some half-remembered memory of freedom and the outdoors when they were but tiny kittens, then perching on the very edge of the bed so as to be as close as possible to whatever action was happening outside, catching the random whiff of fresh rainy air.
It’s raining again now, about 30 degrees colder than it was last night when there were fire trucks outside, and tomorrow there shall be snow.
[tags] fire trucks, sirens, The Prisoner, rain, sleep [/tags]
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