Noise

It's eleven o'clock on a cold, rainy night. I'm tired. I've had a long, hard day, and all I want to do now is get a good night's sleep. I lie down, turn off the reading lamp just within arm's reach of the bed, and close my eyes. I can hear the rubber of car tires pealing off the wet pavement as they pass by my window. The sounds remind me of waves crashing on the beach. It's not long before I'm asleep.
            I wake up with a start and look at the clock. It reads 3:17 a.m. The sirens are blaring as loud as ever. I look out the window and see that it's the car right in front of my house...again! I throw the pillow over my head, but it's no use—another tormented, sleepless night.
            Ever since car alarms first became popular some years ago, there's been many a New Yorker who's been tortured day and night by these toys for grown-ups, and they are toys. They have alarms of every conceivable kind. There are alarms that honk the car's horn and flash the head and taillights; the constant siren alarm; the police siren; alarms that alternate their siren sounds; and my personal favorite, the talking alarm. It's not enough that they wake up whole neighborhoods in the dead of night, now they have to talk too. There's a car on my block that is equipped with one of these obnoxious little gadgets. It probably cost the owner a fortune. It evidently has some kind of sensors built into it. Every time another car drives past it, it says in the most generic TV commercial voice, "Stand back." And God forbid it should rain. It said, "Stand back" for over three hours one night during a rainstorm that obviously must have set it off, much to my chagrin. And if too much rain came down too hard the siren would sound off between such threatening phrases as, "Warning, burglar." Sure, I could call the police, but by the time they arrive the owner always shuts the infernal noisemaker off (usually less than five minutes before they show up).
            Where are these proud car owners when their alarms are wailing in the streets at all hours of the day and night, anyway? They're not within earshot of their alarms; I can vouch for that. It seems that they always try to park as far away from their homes as possible, so as to avoid those unsettling, inevitable sirens from disturbing their precious sleep. The only thing I find more annoying than these accursed alarms is when some lazy S.O.B. honks his horn incessantly to call on someone instead of getting out of the car and ringing the bell.
            This is what's wrong with today's society. Too many people are inconsiderate and only look out for number one. Not that there's anything wrong with a good sense of self-interest, but they don't usually think about how their actions will affect others, and I really doubt they care. It doesn't matter to me how they spend their money, but when it begins to interfere with my peace of mind and body, then I get mad. The truth of the matter is that these people must simply have more money than they know what to do with, so they go out and squander it on the latest craze, whether it be car alarms or cocaine.
            I was relieved some time ago when I heard that a law had been passed prohibiting the alarms to continue for more than three minutes, and I did receive some respite...at first. It isn't as bad now as it was, but there are still those who blatantly disregard the law.
            What I propose is that car alarms be banned. It's not as if these alarms actually deterred car thieves, anyway. If a thief really wants your car there's not much you can do about it, except maybe get some other (quiet) anti-theft device and/or a garage. A good car thief will take less than a minute to break into a car and drive away, but let's say a bad car thief tries to break into a car and the alarm goes off. He might run, but suppose, for some dumb reason, he doesn't. Is the owner going to come out and beat the thief senseless? I would venture to guess that the thief is packing a gun and will shoot anyone who poses a threat to him or the object he covets. So now, instead of protecting his car, the owner loses not only the car but his life as well. I certainly couldn't think of a better way to spend the last moments of my life than looking across a pool of my own blood flowing sewer-bound as some lowlife screeches away in my BMW.

[Note: Written for an essay workshop in college in 1993.]