This is a test of the Dog Street Journal emergency broadcast systems. This call might be disturbing your purse during an Art History lecture, or this text could interrupt your visit to the Caf, or our sirens’ startling tone might cause you to pee yourself in the shower. If so - either above or otherwise unlisted interferences - please use this test as an excuse for anything.
Didn’t get a call? Well, remember hall dues? Maybe next time you’ll pay them during move-in.
I’m sure you heard the sirens though, right? Yes! Of course you did, great job, you succeed at a base level of existence.
I’m in love with emergencies. MSNBC has got me hooked. If it isn’t 24/7 and covered with a news ticker streaming at the bottom, obviously it isn’t worth my time. But what about those awkward times in between emergencies, enjoying senseless pundit melodrama? Sometimes I can’t watch. Sometimes I have lectures to listen to and, God forbid, notes to take.
I need more noise in my life.
Wednesday marked a success for the alarm system. I got an e-mail, I got a text, a phone call, and I pulled out those white iPod appendages from my brainstem. Routine was disabled by a simple “eeeerrRRHHHH-RHHH-eerrrr.” (For a better rendition of the sound, view the 1960 movie The Time Machine… you know, the scene where the guy goes into the future and the sirens grow out of the gorund like potent silver phalluses and then the whole place blows in nuclear-organismic fury. Listen to that part).
I’ve lost my point.
You see, when I pulled my ear buds out, the conversations started.
Usually, and sometimes I’m creepy I understand, but, usually, when walking to class I get little recognition of existence. No self-pity here. I am as guilty of my lack of acknowledgment as I walk by students. Sometimes, I catch an eye and I smile back… but not with my teeth (I think to myself), because that would be creepy. It is only until after classes, when I am back in my room, in front of the mirror, where I realize, smiling with my lips equals “much creepier than with teeth”.
I spend the remaining afternoon wishing and willing myself to recognize people as I get to class the next day. Then I go to sleep and forget my decision.
The College has my back though! When the campus is taken out of its comfort zone, into a new routine, it brings us out of interpersonal seclusion.
How was I after the emergency alarms? I spent the rest of the walk back to my room (where I type this now), talking and joking to a complete stranger.
Oh well - joking about the alarm system and whether it didn’t work is (I know) unoriginal. (God forbid I write a whole features article it.)
However, originality’s sake aside, seeing ear buds from another perspective made me excited for the budding of spring, romance, friends, new beginnings, and all that mushy stuff - the stuff that only an emergency broadcast system can bring.
Daniel Wolfe is a staff columnist for The DSJ. His views do not necessarily represent those of the entire staff.