I was dead to the world.

Last night, I woke up just an hour after I went to bed. I don't know how long that was after I actually fell asleep, but I was out. Still, I heard sirens, which I thought faded away.

I was really on the edge of sleep, ready to fall back into slumber easily, but awake enough to have a debate with myself. "Do I hear a motor idling outside?" I concluded I did. "Do I want to get out of bed and see what it is?" That one took a little longer; the bed was so comfy, after all. Sigh.

Nothing out the back window; Pinocchio must be away on a recruiting trip. As I walked to the living room, though, I saw red, flashing lights through my closed blinds. Hmm. I guess I had heard sirens after all.

Two fire trucks (a regular engine and a hook-and-ladder) were parked in the street, and I saw firemen (in their rubberized suits) carrying something (which I saw later, as they carried it out, looked like a generator) into the house across the street. "Geez," I thought of the new Nougats who had moved in, "they haven't even been there two weeks, and they're already trying to burn the house down?"

Although I saw someone point a flashlight toward the ceiling of the front porch, and I saw the porch light turn on and off several times, there appeared to be nothing major going on. One of the firemen came over to me and apologized for waking me up. "Did you hear us knocking on your door? 9-1-1 gave us your address, but the lady across the street came over and told us it was her house."

I didn't hear them knocking at all. I can only conclude from this (and another story which I am about to relate) that, if I perish in a fire someday, you should not be surprised.

In my sophomore year of college (no, Robomarkov, the college I attended before I met you), I woke up one night to see my RA standing over me. "What the are you doing here?" I asked him. "Don't you hear the fire alarm?" he asked.

Apparently, it was the RA's responsibility to check all the rooms to ensure that residents didn't ignore the fire alarm. He entered my room and saw me still in bed. It transpired that he had to physically shake me awake. After a moment, as I approached full wakefulness, I said, "Oh. Now I hear it."

The fire alarm was on the wall right across from my door, yet I was sleeping so deeply that I didn't hear it.

I come by this affliction naturally. I inherited it from my father. When he was working for RCA, he came back from a trip to Los Angeles and told us that he woke up one morning and went downstairs in the hotel for breakfast, when he noticed that the lobby was a shambles. When he asked the desk clerk what had happened, s/he asked him, "Didn't you feel the earthquake last night?"

Alas, I, too, have an earthquake story. In the summer I spent three weeks at the CTY program in Claremont, CA, I woke up in the middle of the night because my bed was shaking. "Okay, Mom, I'm awake. You can stop shaking the bed." The bed didn't quit shaking. I opened my eyes. My mom wasn't there. Moreover, I wasn't in my bedroom. Oh yeah, I was in California. Earthquake?!

I knelt on the bed, not quite panicking. Should I stay on the bed or get off it? Should I go outside? By the time I decided to get off the bed, the earthquake ceased. I opened my door and looked down the hallway. No one else was around. Didn't they feel it? Didn't they care? Where was everybody? I wasn't the only student not from California; wasn't anyone else worried?

The next day, I was told that I should stand in a doorway. It sure would've been nice if anyone had bothered announcing that before we had an earthquake.

If there were any aftershocks during the rest of my stay, they were either too minor to feel or I slept through them. During the summer I worked at the Wrigley Memorial & Botanical Garden on Santa Catalina Island, I didn't feel any earthquakes at all. Of course, given my nature, I can't say that there weren't any....

Drat. Now I have this song stuck in my head. At least it's one of my favorite songs.