I Will Not

     Went out of town to take a class, which takes place on Friday evening, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday. After class on Friday I went up to my room, turned on the TV, put on my night gown, and got under the covers.

     I had just found some local news to watch when, at straight up 10:00 PM a siren went off.  Oh, brother. In a few seconds it stopped and a voice came over a speaker I hadn't  noticed before, saying, "Attention, attention! An emergency has been reported in the building. Please leave your room, do not run, proceed to the exit, and leave the building," and then the alarm came on again, followed by the announcement and so on.

      I looked at the red speaker on the wall and said, "I will not," and I sat right in that bed.

     I heard my neighbors up and down the fourth floor of the hotel evacuating as directed. I wondered what the emergency was. I checked in with Intuition and got that it didn't feel like fire. The hotel was chock-full of families with children who had been running up and down the halls all afternoon, going to each others rooms and back and forth to the pool and whatnot. Could one of those little yahoos have thrown a fire alarm, maybe to see what would happen? No, it didn't  feel like kids.  I thought of that movie where the character throws the fire alarm in a hotel to prompt an evacuation so he can get somebody, and Intuition said, interesting, but not tonight. It said, look, go or don't go, it's up to you. I was already in my nightgown, cocooned in the bed. I wondered if they would search the rooms, find me there, scold me for not leaving as directed. I decided I would take my chances. The alarm continued on for about ten minutes.

     In about thirty minutes I heard activity on the floor. I thought, well, either it's the room by room search, or they've let people back in. When no one pounded on my door, I knew it was my neighbors returning to their rooms. Everybody got all settled in, I had just drifted off to sleep, and about an hour later the alarm went off again, second verse, same as the first. I stayed put, just like before. When that alarm shut off I went back to sleep and son-of-a-gun if another alarm didn't go off about an hour later! 

     The next morning I learned several things:

          1. The good news is you definitely wont sleep through one of those alarms. 

          2. Indeed, it wasn't any of the kids, nor a fire. It was some defect in the alarm system.

          3. The manager on duty that night promised that night would be complimentary, but the manager the next morning didn't know anything about it (interesting).