I'd like to personally thank the genius who invented car alarms. If I ever had the opportunity to meet this person, I imagine the conversation would go a little something like this:
Inventor: (probably wearing a power suit and $1000 cuff links. Jerk.) "Hello. Why, yes, I am the incredibly wealthy genius who inv--"
Me: *SMACK!*
Inventor: ...
Me: "WHY, YES, I DID JUST MAPLE-LEAF YOUR FUCKIN' FOREHEAD, SON!"
Then I strut away like John Travolta on Saturday Night Fever.
Earlier this week, I had the immense pleasure of listening to a car alarm go off right outside my window for fifteen minutes at 10:30pm. A record total for a single vehicle around here. It seems my block is the designated parking zone for delicate mid-sized sedans and pansy sports utility vehicles whose security alarms sound at the slightest change in environment, be it a 2 degree temperature drop or any gust of wind above 5mph. At least five alarms go off every night without fail. Though, most of them go off on the street at the front of the apartment, a few go off right outside Brooklyn's bedroom window.
In this instance, I had finally gotten B down for bed. She was being particularly resistant to being put to bed, and because she's the pants-wearing CEO of this family, I spent the remainder of the evening chasing her around the apartment and coercing her into sitting on my lap with bottles and promises to read her "Happy Baby Animals" book 10 times back-to-back. At long last, she rubbed her eyes and gave herself away. That was my cue to tuck her in, so without a moment's hesitation I did just that and slipped quietly out of her door.
Ahhhh, sweet silence.
I tiptoe'd to the kitchen and fixed myself an intricate, gourmet dinner (i.e. PB&J and a Pabst, because I'm cultured like that). Cracked open the beer, plopped my springy, youthful, non-cellulite-ridden ass on the couch (what?) and prepared to enjoy the fuck out of the serenity that had settled up in this joint. In the very moment that I slid my teeth into that sandwich, a car alarm sounded in the grocery store parking lot right outside the windows to the living room and Brooklyn's bedroom. No amount of Jiffy-crunchy-peanut-butter-chewing could muffle the sound that pierced through the walls and filled the apartment. Good lord, it was loud. I reluctanly paused my delicious nomming to silently will the car alarm to stop, waiting for the owners to find the panic button on their keychain. Find it... Find it... Find it! My ears turned like a cat's, twitching back and forth between the window and Brooklyn's bedroom. Frozen in a half-standing crouch with my Pabst in my right hand and my plate in my left, I was prepared to go full Rambo mode on someone's windshield if that alarm woke my sleeping child.
I stayed in my disgruntled hillbilly stance for a full five minutes before turning to the window to get a visual on the idiocy below. The urgency of the alarm was reminiscent of a break-in at Fort Knox. I scanned the line-up of cars, expecting to see a Bentley or a Benz or, at the very least, a souped up car, but what my eyes landed on was far from expected. The perpetrator: a 1997-ish two-door Toyota Tercel in "rust," as in actual rust. Why anyone wants to protect that tetanus hazzard on wheels with any kind of alarm is beyond me, but they apparently treasured it enough to outfit it with the loudest alarm on earth.
For ten minutes longer I waited, glaring out the window, grinding my teeth, pondering over the "boy who cried wolf" phenomenon that the car alarm tends to produce. Who really takes these things seriously anymore? They're so touchy that everyone just assumes they're all triggered by accident. Couldn't there be a better system for this? Like wooden fists situated in random unpredictable areas (like doorside crotch-level) and pop out unexpectedly when the glass on a window has been fully broken?
A grocery store security guard walked over slowly and took down the plate number before sidling back in to the store where he probably made an announcement over the intercom that someone's prized possession was acting, er, possessed. Only momentarily was my ire softened when I spotted another shopper approaching his car, which was parked next to the Tercel. He was glancing around nervously as he loaded groceries into his trunk. Clearly paranoid that everyone must think he's to blame, he unloaded his cart and shot out of the parking lot like water out of a deep-fryer.*
At last, a couple in their late 40's came teetering out of the automatic doors and I knew instantly that the Tercel was theirs. They hobbled quickly toward the car, the man briefly pausing to pull up his greasy sweatpants and throw a case of Mountain Dew in the trunk while the woman rooted around in her enormous purse for what felt like eons before pulling out a plump fist full of keys and triumphantly waggling them in the man's face.
Push the alarm button or, so help me, I will burst through my brick wall like the juiced-up love child of Snooki's assaulter and PopEye and, by brute roid-rage force, I will squeeze your tin can car into a diamond, which I will then grind up with my teeth and spit on the ground at your feet.
BLIP. BLIP.
Silence.
I exhaled a deep sigh of relief. Thank. You. Jesu--
BLIP. BLIP-BLIP. WWWWWWWWEEEEEEE--OOOOOOO-WEEEEEE-OOOOO...
At this point, I'm positive a few blood vessels burst in my forehead and I may or may not have turned green like the Incredible Hulk.
BLIP. BLIP.
And it was over for real this time.
The alarm, in it's 15 minutes of splendor, never did wake up Brooklyn, but it did awake in me a beast of rabid hatred that can only be tamed by the satisfaction of smacking the inventor in the forehead with my open hand and/or all car alarms being outlawed and amassed in a pile and melted down into something more productive, like sound-proofing for my walls...or plastic miniature figurines of myself for my own vanity and enjoyment.
I suppose this is the end, for now. Until next time, car alarms.
And, until we meet in person, Sir Douche, Inventor of Car Alarms--here's my one-fingered salute to you...
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*Dumping water into a deep-fryer is explosive. Trust. Try it, pal, and you risk looking like Freddy Krueger's uglier twin brother.
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