Jazzy (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} jazzyd) wrote,@ 2007-07-10 17:24:00 |
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This is the story of how I ended up on a New York street corner in my pajamas at 5 am.
I was having a strange dream last night about two pairs of hands: in front of these hands were two red buttons, labeled "A" and "B." As the hands pressed these buttons, a strange robot voice kept repeating "A or B or A. A or B or A. A or B or A."
The dream was disturbing, and then suddenly the robot voice became very loud, so loud that it woke me up. That was when I realized it wasn't in my head; it was coming from somewhere in the building. It was the fire alarm. It probably took me a good minute after waking up to come to that realization; the sound was so bizarre, and because it had started in the other tower of my dorm, I was confused. At first I thought it was street noise, since there are sirens and car noises all night. I guess that's the problem with living in New York...you grow too used to the noise.
Anyway, it was really dark, and I was delirious, and on the top bunk, and not appropriately dressed for the outside (it wasn't that bad, I was just kind of bra-less), and didn't know what to do. I was just trying not to hurt myself, so I slid off the top bunk (still completely out of it) and put a giant shirt over the shirt I was already wearing, and grabbed my keys off of the table. I didn't get my ID for the building, because I didn't want to waste time fishing through my bag, and I figured my keys were enough to prove I was a resident.
Fire safety, right? Yeah. Well, we'll come back to that later.
I went to the door of the suite and looked out of the peephole. No fire. So I came out into the hallway and watched some girls try to go to the elevator before someone shouted at them that they needed to take the stairs. Anyway, there we were, all the University of Dreams kids, shuffling down the stairwell in our pajamas at 4:30 am, pretty much delirious and pissed off because we had work in the morning and JESUS THE FIRE ALARM WAS SO OBNOXIOUS. Obnoxious isn't even the right word...it was the most horrible noise I'd ever heard.
So this is NYU, not Wash U, so it's not like freshman year when the Danforth alarm would go off and we'd all walk out into the grassy area of WGE and chill on the hammocks. When a fire alarm goes off in an NYU dorm, you get to stand on the street corner.
I wish I'd brought my camera. Keep in mind that technically two twelve-story buildings were evacuated. That's a lot of people. They were in nightgowns and slippers, they had acne cream on their faces, scrunchies in their hair, and they were standing on 3rd Avenue. And they were pissed (I include myself in that group.)
After about 20 minutes it was obvious that there was no serious problem. So I prepared to go back inside with everyone else.
Oh yeah, and that's when they told us to get out our IDs.
Right.
So I ended up standing off to the side with all of the other students who had decided not to waste precious potentially life-saving moments just to grab their NYU ID. And security treated us like idiots, too, which was completely unnecessary. We waited out there while every other student got to go in (it took a while, because security kept stopping them), and then they let us line up. I ended up squished and sideways because the people around me were trying to squeeze through the door. When I protested, the security guard came forward and stopped everyone and yelled at me, telling me, "Don't push, let's act like civilized people here."
Boo! Whatever, enjoy your job.
Brian, your dad's a fire chief -- he'd back me on my no-ID position, right? Oh well, at least I eventually got into the building, sometime around 5:30 am. Thank heavens for the free coffee at Sirius.
Oh, and for the record, the Keith Urban/Alicia Keys version of "Gimme Shelter" from Live Earth was not amazing. Sorry, but for me it's Mick Jagger and Merry Clayton or nothing. Neither Alicia Keys nor Joss Stone (who performed it at the South Africa concert) can make that song bleed like Merry could.
Best part: 3:02, Merry gets so into it that her voice cracks on "murder" and Mick shouts "Whoo!"
I was having a strange dream last night about two pairs of hands: in front of these hands were two red buttons, labeled "A" and "B." As the hands pressed these buttons, a strange robot voice kept repeating "A or B or A. A or B or A. A or B or A."
The dream was disturbing, and then suddenly the robot voice became very loud, so loud that it woke me up. That was when I realized it wasn't in my head; it was coming from somewhere in the building. It was the fire alarm. It probably took me a good minute after waking up to come to that realization; the sound was so bizarre, and because it had started in the other tower of my dorm, I was confused. At first I thought it was street noise, since there are sirens and car noises all night. I guess that's the problem with living in New York...you grow too used to the noise.
Anyway, it was really dark, and I was delirious, and on the top bunk, and not appropriately dressed for the outside (it wasn't that bad, I was just kind of bra-less), and didn't know what to do. I was just trying not to hurt myself, so I slid off the top bunk (still completely out of it) and put a giant shirt over the shirt I was already wearing, and grabbed my keys off of the table. I didn't get my ID for the building, because I didn't want to waste time fishing through my bag, and I figured my keys were enough to prove I was a resident.
Fire safety, right? Yeah. Well, we'll come back to that later.
I went to the door of the suite and looked out of the peephole. No fire. So I came out into the hallway and watched some girls try to go to the elevator before someone shouted at them that they needed to take the stairs. Anyway, there we were, all the University of Dreams kids, shuffling down the stairwell in our pajamas at 4:30 am, pretty much delirious and pissed off because we had work in the morning and JESUS THE FIRE ALARM WAS SO OBNOXIOUS. Obnoxious isn't even the right word...it was the most horrible noise I'd ever heard.
So this is NYU, not Wash U, so it's not like freshman year when the Danforth alarm would go off and we'd all walk out into the grassy area of WGE and chill on the hammocks. When a fire alarm goes off in an NYU dorm, you get to stand on the street corner.
I wish I'd brought my camera. Keep in mind that technically two twelve-story buildings were evacuated. That's a lot of people. They were in nightgowns and slippers, they had acne cream on their faces, scrunchies in their hair, and they were standing on 3rd Avenue. And they were pissed (I include myself in that group.)
After about 20 minutes it was obvious that there was no serious problem. So I prepared to go back inside with everyone else.
Oh yeah, and that's when they told us to get out our IDs.
Right.
So I ended up standing off to the side with all of the other students who had decided not to waste precious potentially life-saving moments just to grab their NYU ID. And security treated us like idiots, too, which was completely unnecessary. We waited out there while every other student got to go in (it took a while, because security kept stopping them), and then they let us line up. I ended up squished and sideways because the people around me were trying to squeeze through the door. When I protested, the security guard came forward and stopped everyone and yelled at me, telling me, "Don't push, let's act like civilized people here."
Boo! Whatever, enjoy your job.
Brian, your dad's a fire chief -- he'd back me on my no-ID position, right? Oh well, at least I eventually got into the building, sometime around 5:30 am. Thank heavens for the free coffee at Sirius.
Oh, and for the record, the Keith Urban/Alicia Keys version of "Gimme Shelter" from Live Earth was not amazing. Sorry, but for me it's Mick Jagger and Merry Clayton or nothing. Neither Alicia Keys nor Joss Stone (who performed it at the South Africa concert) can make that song bleed like Merry could.
Best part: 3:02, Merry gets so into it that her voice cracks on "murder" and Mick shouts "Whoo!"
