The Alarm Caused by the Alarm

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It was rather funny and saddening at the same time to witness the alarm caused by the testing of the fire alarm and evacuation siren the other day at university.

We sat, our minuscule art class, working, cutting apart expensive interior decoration and art magazines so as to obtain a sufficient amount of pictures to collage a room showing perspective for our art journals. We all were quite occupied with our works, all eager to obtain the right sorts of photographs so as to destroy them and paste them eternally on blank pieces of paper, aiming for that sufficiently high mark that will satisfy us enough to justify the amount of money we pay for our presence in that class.

It is amazing the level of silence one encounters when one finds a group of students each trying to impress the teacher. Immersed in slicing through the highly finessed work of others to create our own somewhat finessed works, we treaded through magazines as though their contents were effortless and their contributors were useless nothings who have no conception of what a better looking decoration looks like. 

Too excited with gluesticks and scissors, we forgot the outside world. We forgot signs of life outside of the realm of magazine-cutting, and we were thus rather startled when we heard on the speakers a loud siren, followed by a deep voice, "sorry for this test, this is a fire alarm test, please ignore it".

Everyone began to panic. They winced their eyes at the shriek of each siren, which, mind you, was not that loud at all despite their failed attempts at a crescendo, and I sat there thinking of my parents and my cultural heritage.

My parents fled Lebanon from the atrocities that are still going on to this day. Bomb sirens are a normal thing for them, and to think that the people in my art class were frightened of a fire alarm siren is of high interest to me. 

Some people simply do not take into account the lives or circumstances of others. These people are not aware of how blessed they are in their ignorance. For what they do not know, literally will not kill them.