So, yesterday I’m at Costco, and I’m parking the car, and I
hear what sounds like a sickly, maybe malfunctioning alarm sound coming from
across the parking lot. It keeps going
for a long time, and it is funny to me how like, no one is even looking to see
where it’s coming from, because “car alarm” has gone from being “the sound that
indicates someone is stealing a car and you should call the authorities” to
“the sound that indicates someone is annoying and has an old car, and they need
to come turn that alarm off.” It’s
interesting how something that was seemingly so useful a few decades ago is now
just a common, annoying sound, meaning that it has lost all of its cultural
currency. This also makes me wonder why
they are even putting alarms in cars anymore, since the lack of value would
seem to indicate that any money spent on an alarm is wasted money
Anyhoo, the alarm keeps going, and going, and the alarm is
kind of weak and warbly-sounding, so it sounds more like circus music than an
actual car alarm, and now I’m curious, so I look around, only to discover that
there are people sitting in the car (which is a beige Toyota, in case you're wondering), the alarm of which is going off. What’s weird about this is that these people
do not look AT ALL like they’re concerned or embarrassed or looking for a way
to disable the alarm. The driver is a
40ish looking guy, and the passenger is an older-looking, white-haired
woman who I’m assuming is his mother, and they both are just sitting there,
like “Yeah, the car alarm is going off, and we’re just sitting here. No big whoop.”
Situations like this make me start to doubt my own sanity a
little bit, like “Can other people (including the people in the car) not hear
the alarm? This is getting a little
surreal,” and I really want to pull out my phone and shoot some video of them
so I can show you and prove to myself that this actually happened, but a) I
don’t want to embarrass them more in case they really are trying to handle the
situation, and b) there is no time to start shooting video, because just
as I’m thinking about ways to shoot this video in an unobtrusive way, the guy
starts up the car and they drive away in it, alarm blaring, lights flashing, sounding like some kind of demented, clownish ice cream truck.
Here’s the thing—I can hear the car, so I can hear them make
a big loop around the Costco parking lot, not actually leaving, but circling
back around a couple of times before they finally make the right turn onto the
street and leave for good.
This whole situation makes my mind reel. What will happen next? Do they have clowns in their trunk? WHY did neither of them even make the
semblance of a face, acknowledging that this was a less than ideal situation
and they were trying to handle it? Is it even legal to drive with your car alarm
going off like that? Also, the hazard
lights were flashing as part of the “alarm going off” scenario, and I’m pretty
sure you’re not supposed to be moving the car when the hazards are
on. Are they going to drive around like
this until they find an open repair shop or gas station (on a Sunday) that can disable the
alarm? Do you call AAA if this happens,
and they bring a tow truck (which takes at least an hour)? I recall someone telling me once that your
car can be towed after 30 minutes of the alarm going off, and that makes me
wonder—do the guys at the impound/ tow yard just know how to disable the alarm
of every make and model of car on the market? Maybe they should have just gone straight there.
I will admit, I sat there for awhile waiting for them to
come back so I could ask, but either they got the alarm to stop, or they kept
moving, clowning it up as they went down the road. I never got my answer to any of these
questions.
