When was the last time that you were walking through a parking lot and somewhere off in the distance heard a car alarm go off and immediately whipped out your cell phone to dial 9-1-1 while thinking… Oh no! Somebody’s car is being broken into! I must notify the authorities!
That just plain doesn’t happen.
I have thought about this often and was hit hard on the point this morning when I woke up to someone’s car alarm going off outside my house. I don’t live in the nicest of neighborhoods down at school, so there is a pretty good chance that the car alarm was going off for legit reasons… however… probably not. As I laid in bed this morning listening to the awful BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP…. (get the point?) my thoughts weren’t of concern for the owner of the car. I wasn’t even concerned that a criminal could be mulling around our street and MY car… my only thoughts were, would somebody PLEASE turn that stupid car alarm off!
If you really think about it, the car alarm is a great invention. I am sure it does its job. If I were to steal a car and I set its alarm off in the process, I would most definitely move onto a different car. The alarm may not send people running to call the police, but it does at least draw attention to a possibly violated car. So in the end… I guess I have to admit it gets the job done… however, in a very annoying fashion.
Let me now voice my opinion on car alarms and fireworks. Every year, I go back home to Mason for the 3rd of July Fireworks. We set up blankets and chairs and watch the display of all imaginable colors (except blue… did you know there is no such thing as a blue firework?). And every year there are the multitudes of upper-middle class, rich cars, all fully loaded with their car alarms that start blaring with the first louder than the rest firework. So after that, we watch the fireworks, glorious as they are to not the medley of cicadas and crickets… but to the toots of Beemers and Escalades. Kind of kills the atmosphere if you ask me. Please people; just turn your car alarm off when you go to fireworks… the world appreciates it.
Before you ask I will answer; no, my car does not have a car alarm. I drive a 1994 Chevrolet Cavalier; the look of the car is a valiant car alarm in itself. Cheers to all those people who while sitting around the dinner table and all of a sudden hearing their car alarm go off, just click the button without going to check on it. Cheers to those folks at the fireworks with car alarms so sensitive a butterfly flapping its wings in China will soon set it off. And cheers to those who have cars with car alarms and set them off just to find them in a busy parking lot. Because of you… (with a bottle of Aspirin) I write this post.