The Mason-Monroe Morning Madness

Today, at 4:04 AM, as I was lying comfortably in my bed, I felt a disturbance in the force. It was as though a thousand voices cried out at once.

Unlike in Star Wars, however, they were not silenced.

At first, I thought my phone was acting up again (it had been all night), and so I turned it off quickly. It was at that moment I realized that nothing that John and I had ever brought into the room was capable of such a loud, shrill, mind-numbing sound. So, I quickly slipped out of bed, informed my hald-asleep roommate that the loud noise was a fire alarm, put on some shorts and my handy-dandy GMU Crocs, and walked out of the building (If there’s a fire in the building, and it’s not in my room, there’s no way I wouldn’t have a few seconds to put on some shorts and my Crocs.) I considered grabbing a sweatjacket, but decided against it… bad idea.

Not only was it still drizzling from the monsoon that we had experienced late Thursday, it was cold. A lot of people headed slowly for the Eisenhower building. I decided to stay behind and make sure Eli got out. Eventually, he and his two roommates popped up and we talked for a bit. A lot of complaints and discussions of “Well, what now?” were flying around the group who remained outside. The building was quite obviously not on fire, with people still trickling out. So, we had some reason to try to figure out why on Earth someone would rig a false fire alarm at the ungodly hour of four in the morning.

Having already ruled out the theory of “the building’s on fire”, we moved on to “fire drill”, which we almost immediately managed to eliminate. There were far too few administrators making sure everyone was getting out, and far too few people apologizing and saying to “suck it up”. That left only one possibility in our minds, a prank.

Now, while our conversation was going on, some of the staff from the other buildings had shown up and began to try to quiet the crowd down. “The people in the other buildings are trying to sleep,” they informed us. Honestly, there are three major problems, at least from our point of view, with this logic. Let me list them out here:

1. We were trying to sleep too until some idiot pulled the alarm.
2. Our building is wailing like a baby with a ripe diaper, and the noise we’re making is waking people up?
3. We’re cold, we’re wet, and we’re tired. Talking is the only thing keeping us from rioting.

In the staff’s defense, however, they did open the gate for the fire truck which never showed up. In my book, they get an A+ at opening gates. That’s important… No really… It is…

And that’s another thing. The fire department never showed up. I mean, sure this wasn’t a real fire, but it sure wasn’t a drill either! Now, I’m scared for my life that a real fire may actually happen sometime, and the fire department won’t show up again! Please, any higher powers up there, don’t let my building catch fire.

As I now understand it, the campus police are supposed to be the first ones on the scene, and to their credit, they were… over a quarter of an hour after the alarm was pulled. One officer showed up around 4:20 and brought us back inside, shut off the fire alarm, and that was that. Now, I was certainly happy to be back inside, but good God, people… fifteen minutes. It takes me that long to walk across campus. They’re the campus police! They have cars! What took them so long?!

So, finally, back in the room, I asked my roommate if he knew anything about why the fire alarm went off. (Scientific method, folks, you’ve got to confirm your hypothesis.) Here’s what happened as he explained it:

Someone in Jefferson (the other dorm building attached to ours) found some thirty-year-old men passed out drunk on the floor, so they pulled the fire alarm.

Wow… just wow…

They found some thirty-year-old men (estimated age, of course) passed out on the floor, and pulled the fire alarm. God forbid calling 911, forget telling the RA. PULL THE FIRE ALARM, JIMMY!!! YOU’VE GOT TO PULL THE FIRE ALARM!!! (I know it could have been a girl. Don’t judge my surface-level sexism.)

In the end, a lot of people made some big mistakes this morning. Little Sheltered Idiot should’ve realized that, when a fire alarm handle says “In Case of Fire”, it really means “ONLY in Case of Fire”, not “In Case of Fire or Anything Else Weird that Happens Here”. Whomever the drunken numbskulls were, well, their mistake is just too obvious. The staff should have handled the situation more delicately, the campus police should have shown up sooner, the fire department should have shown up at all, and I should have brought a sweatjacket.

…Yes, I do believe that’s the only mistake I made this morning

With that out of the way, expect Day 18 Part 2 sometime this weekend, just like I promised.