Alarming

There’s a car alarm going off nearby. It has been going off for about five, maybe ten minutes. I swear the noise has changed, though I think it’s my mind playing tricks on me – trying to find another pattern to focus on rather than this maddening, repetitive whistle.

I like that car alarms all have their own distinct voices. Sometimes they suit the car, sometimes they don’t. Take my dad’s car, for example: it reminds me of so many things. Of the QI alarm when a wrong, stereotyped answer is said. Once I’ve fumbled with the keys and turned it off, I always hear that “woooOoh” voice in my head at the end.

When it goes off, I feel like a professional thief who has snuck into a museum to steal the rarest of all rocks, except something goes awry and the alarms blare and the lights turn on and I’m caught hovering by a rope over the rock – just dangling there, suspended, frozen in time while everything kicks into action around me. All the open doorways become closed – metal grates all rushing to the floor at once. Loud clangs echoing throughout the museum.

My point is that it’s a little Kia Picanto but it honks. Like you know the noise The Fonz makes to teach kids what to do when in danger? That kind of honk. An ugly, brash noise.

Even though that’s the case, even now I wonder if it’s our car that’s making the noise – this sweet but annoying little whistle of an alarm – but I can’t be bothered to get up and check. And I wonder if everyone else is doing exactly the same, and maybe that’s the whole problem, but I still don’t get up and check.

At last, the alarm has been turned off. Thank goodness it has been turned off. My brain felt like it was turning to mush.

And there we have it: a running commentary on a car alarm. Only quality posts on this blog.