It's A Fire Drill, I Can't Turn it Down

If I described to you shuffling into a hall, taking a seat on the floor and being told to cover your head, you would know what I’m talking about right? As a child I grew up practicing emergency drills at school and I remember thinking, “If this is a drill, why does the alarm have to sound so long?” At what age do we forget this training?

A couple of days ago my phone rang, it was my grandmother. I started to say, “hello” but was cut off in mid word. I could tell she was all on edge by her first statement, “I’ve lost my ear plugs!” She had requested a pair several weeks ago and I had obeyed her request by taking her a pair. Though I never really understood why she wanted them.

”Well, I have plenty, I can bring you another pair,” I said trying to appease the despair in her voice.  “Can you bring them tonight? I need them by one o’clock tomorrow” she questioned me. “No, not tonight, I’ll bring them with me when I come to take you to the doctor.” That comment set off a backlash conversation that was purely logical. Of which I learned the true reason for her even requesting the ear plugs in the first place.

”Well, that will be too late. We are having one of those dammmn, fire drills tomorrow.” She always says damn in a low, very drawn out way as if to disguise she is even vocalizing the word. “They give me a headache, that is why I wanted the ear plugs to begin with and why does that alarm have to be so loud?”

She was just starting her logic and this is the conversation that ensued:

Jules: “because you might be in bed and it has to wake you up,”
Granny: “Well, no one is in bed at one in the afternoon, they could turn it down.”
Jules: “They cannot turn it down, it has no volume knob. Besides what about those people that are hard of hearing?”
Granny: “Well, I suggest they buy them all hearing aids.”

Now, how could I respond to that? She wasn’t done though and after catching her breath she continued.

Granny: “You know; it would not be so bad if it were only in the hall, but it sounds in my room and blinks a bright red light at me. I think they are trying to drive us crazy.”
Jules: “No one is trying to drive you crazy. It sounds in your room because that is where you are most of the time and the blinking light is for the deaf. It allows them to see that the alarm is going off. Granny, it sounds in both your room and the hall to help the deaf follow the vibrations from the sound.”

Wait for it, wait for it, here comes her logic.

Granny: “Well, they are blind not deaf, why can’t they turn it down? When are you going to bring my ear plugs”

What I learned from this phone conversation is the that at some point later in life we accumulated a lifetime of circular logic. Logic that will ensnare even the closet of victims and once entrapped lead them in circles.

I got her a new set of ear plugs and the fire drill…

She went out and sat in the shade until it had passed.

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