Air Raid

This morning at 5:15am I woke up to an alarm (Yes, Stacy and Katelyn I can wake up to an alarm, but only in emergency circumstances). Now this wasn’t just any alarm, this is the doomsday, nuc, air raid alarm going off in the whole city! Julie, the last roommate here, and I decided we needed to take action. I turned on the news expecting to find a red alert and the message, “EVACUATE THE CITY” streaming across the bottom of the screen. I flipped through about a dozen channels and found nothing…had they not known what we know now?! There is an air raid and we need to take cover!

Julie and I grabbed some blankets and sat in the hallway. I had considered sitting in the bathtub, but thought it was unnecessary at this time. My shoes and a water bottle were ready and waiting for me by the door just in case we had to make a quick escape. We hadn’t heard any bombs yet and we didn’t see any smoke…was it swine flu? Were we being quarantined?

We made some phone calls and nothing was confirmed to us. The concierge told us when he finds out he will let me know. How will he let me know? He didn’t even get my number. I called again about a half hour later…this time he said he would let us all know by way of a letter. Great, thank you kind sir for your letter regarding our lives stop I appreciate your concern for us to have to evacuate the building stop would have been nice to know a little sooner stop before the building was on fire stop. What is this, the 1800’s.

I could see people start wandering the streets in the bleak darkness to find the location the bull horn noise was coming from. I could see it all now just like in the movies…People walking about and standing on their balconies and then WHAM! We wouldn’t even know what hit us. This was my worry so we stayed in doors…ok I did go outside once, but that was to get footage and to tell my family I loved them if this was going to be it!

(the noise is so loud and so obnoxious)

To keep ourselves going we had a little peach cobbler that I made the night before, still delicious even in the wee hours of the morning.

7:15am…two hours later…Julie and I haven’t slept for hours…when is the noise going to stop…we are both drifting in and out of sleep. When all of the sudden there is complete silence…like the silence after a storm…

8:10am…late for work! My eyes are bloodshot and I can barely roll myself out of bed. Was that a dream? What happened the night before? Why did I sleep through my alarm?

It couldn’t have been a dream because Julie remembers too! Plus other people comment on it throughout the day. All I know is that UDC (University of D.C.) had their alarm go off. It was like a community alarm. What in the world…what were they doing at 5 o’clock in the morning running drills and on top of that, drills that lasted two hours!

All I can say it that I was prepared for it all and so was Julie. It was pretty lonely just the two of us last night but we survived whatever it was, an air raid, the swine flu… In the late hours of the night (some would call 5am morning) your mind comes up with all sorts of ideas. These ideas can be somewhat mixed with reality and dreams. That is what happened to me. I am just glad to be sitting at my desk typing away like it was another normal night of sleep and another normal day.