For years, there was a particular obnoxious car alarm in the apartment complex next door. It would go off about every other evening, with a distinctive sequence of bizarre sounds. After a month or so of this, my daughter and I had involuntarily memorized the sound, and would start humming along whenever it went off:
BRAMP! BRAMP! BRAMP!
OWWW WHOO! OWWW WHOO! OWWW WHOO!
HRANK! HRANK! HRANK!
BEE-OH! BEE-OH! BEE-OH!
And on and on and on and on....
A car alarm marks you as being about as vain and self-possessed as you can get. In place of an actual life, you define yourself by your car, and how pitiful is that? And you are so terrified that something will happen to it (apparently being unclear on the concept of car insurance) that you place the safety of your car above any consideration of your neighbors' right to peace and quiet.
And so you enroll me--against my will--in your own personal car-protection posse. Every time some goddam squirrel brushes up against your beloved machine, the alarm goes off, and I'm supposed to interrupt what I'm doing and investigate, just on the miniscule chance that it's actually a thief. Of course, you continue doing what you're doing, because you're way too important to keep an eye on your own car. And why should you? I'll do it for you, no problem. Can you say "narcissistic?"
Not that I'm bitter. No, the opposite is true. I've embraced the car alarm as an inevitable fact of life in the urban landscape. And I live for the day when a car alarm actually alerts me to thieves in the process of stealing a car. I can see it now. A scruffy-looking character in a black knit cap and turtleneck slides one of those metal things down the window while his tattoed accomplice scans the street for cops. Suddenly the car alarm goes off. I look over, assess the situation, then sprint over to them. There's terror in their eyes as I stop right in front of them and say:
"You gentlemen need a hand with that?"
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