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Sounds of
Madness
It's eleven o'clock on a cold,
rainy night. I'm tired.
I've had a long, hard day, and all I want to do now is get a good night's
sleep. I lie down, turn off the
reading lamp just within arm's reach of the bed, and close my eyes.
I can hear the rubber of car tires pealing off the wet pavement as they
pass by my window. The sounds
remind me of waves crashing on the beach. It's
not long before I'm asleep.
I wake up with a start and look at
the clock. It reads 3:17 a.m.
The sirens are blaring as loud as ever.
I look out the window and see that it's the car right in front of my
house...again! I throw the pillow
over my head, but it's no use—another tormented, sleepless night.
Ever since car alarms first became
popular some years ago, there's been many a New Yorker who's been tortured day
and night by these toys for grown-ups, and they are toys.
They have alarms of every conceivable kind.
There are alarms that honk the car's horn and flash the head and
taillights; the constant siren alarm; the police siren; alarms that alternate
their siren sounds; and my personal favorite, the talking alarm.
It's not enough that they wake up whole neighborhoods in the dead of
night, now they have to talk too. There's
a car on my block that is equipped with one of these obnoxious little gadgets.
It probably cost the owner a fortune.
It evidently has some kind of sensors built into it.
Every time another car drives past it, it says in the most generic TV
commercial voice, "Stand back." And
God forbid it should rain. It said,
"Stand back" for over three hours one night during a rainstorm that
obviously must have set it off, much to my chagrin.
And if too much rain came down too hard the siren would sound off between
such threatening phrases as, "Warning, burglar."
Sure, I could call the police, but by the time they arrive the owner
always shuts the infernal noisemaker off (usually less than five minutes before
they show up).
Where are these proud car owners
when their alarms are wailing in the streets at all hours of the day and night,
anyway? They're not within earshot
of their alarms; I can vouch for that. It
seems that they always try to park as far away from their homes as possible, so
as to avoid those unsettling, inevitable sirens from disturbing their precious
sleep. The only thing I find more
annoying than these accursed alarms is when some lazy S.O.B. honks his horn
incessantly to call on someone instead of getting out of the car and ringing the
bell.
This is what's wrong with today's
society. Too many people are
inconsiderate and only look out for number one. Not that there's anything wrong with a good sense of
self-interest, but they don't usually think about how their actions will affect
others, and I really doubt they care. It
doesn't matter to me how they spend their money, but when it begins to interfere
with my peace of mind and body, then I get mad.
The truth of the matter is that these people must simply have more money
than they know what to do with, so they go out and squander it on the latest
craze, whether it be car alarms or cocaine.
I was relieved some time ago when I
heard that a law had been passed prohibiting the alarms to continue for more
than three minutes, and I did receive some respite...at first.
It isn't as bad now as it was, but there are still those who blatantly
disregard the law.
What I propose is that car alarms be banned.
It's not as if these alarms actually deterred car thieves, anyway.
If a thief really wants your car there's not much you can do about it,
except maybe get some other (quiet) anti-theft device and/or a garage.
A good car thief will take less than a minute to break into a car and
drive away, but let's say a bad car thief tries to break into a car and the
alarm goes off. He might run, but
suppose, for some dumb reason, he doesn't.
Is the owner going to come out and beat the thief senseless?
I would venture to guess that the thief is packing a gun and will shoot
anyone who poses a threat to him or the object he covets.
So now, instead of protecting his car, the owner loses not only the car
but his life as well. I certainly
couldn't think of a better way to spend the last moments of my life than looking
across a pool of my own blood flowing sewer-bound as some lowlife screeches away
in my BMW.
[Note: Written for an essay workshop in college in 1993.]
Copyright © 2008 by Kevin Dunn
kbdunn@gmail.com
Last revised
April 19, 2008
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