Listening To Hidden Messages (Over The Sound Of Sirens)

I am a light sleeper.  I wake up from the slightest sounds.  I know this, because I wake up from mice getting smacked into traps (see previous posts), or the sound of two drunk men arguing at 3:00 a.m. outside, or the sound of the neighbors having what sounded like an orgy with two elephants, a chimpanzee, and a flock of chinchillas.  I wake up a lot.  

One sound my mind has learned to drown out is the sound of sirens.  Fire-truck and police sirens are like baby screams at a maternity hospital.  You hear one every few minutes.  I almost wish they sounded more like violins or trombones so that way atleast I can have my very own orchestrated soundtrack to my life here in Manhattan.  But they don't.  They are loud, and annoying and on top of everything, the sound of their truck/car horns are louder than an arena filled with 14 year olds watching a Jonas Brothers concert.

I have learned how to drown out the sound of fire trucks at night, and yet, I still have my "keep-my-family-safe" feelings that make me edgy.  I don't know what it is, but whenever I feel that my family (my wife and two dogs) are in danger, I wake up.  Sometimes its a strange sound of the wind on the windows (which in my mind is a burglar cutting in through the window by the fire escape), or the sound of a drunk guy hanging outside our apartment in the middle of the night singing (in my mind he is a burglar who will later climb my fire escape and wake me up again by cutting in the window).  Call it "paranoia".  Call it "on-edge".  I live in New York damn-it, and you need "life insurance" just to get on the "E" train.

But for the last 4 days something strange has been going on.  I am a firm believer of messages.  Not text messages, or sluty MySpace messages from a girl who says she thinks I am a very cool and hot and really wants me to check out her webcam at some unknown website that ends with .xxx instead of .com.  I believe in messages in the way that certain things that happen in your day-to-day are trying to tell you something.  It's up to you to figure it out.  

Saturday was Passover. My wife and I sat and had a nice dinner and talked about the holiday, the reason why the Jews walked in the desert for so long without anyone getting suspicious that Moses may be just a bit on the crazy train.  We talked about why the Jews eat Matza and how is it possible that while they didn't have time to make bread in the desert, they did somehow have time to find a vineyard in the desert to sip wine. Magical places those deserts in Egypt.  Then we got to talk a bit about my fond memories of being a kid in Israel.  I told my wife about how my grandmother (may she rest in peace and forever be blessed with endless amount of Arabic Soap Oprahs in heaven).  One of the very few memories I have from my childhood was with my grandmother (most of my other childhood memories have been replaced with Wu-Tang lyrics in High School).  One of the memories was a red fire truck she gave me as a gift once.  I don't recall why she gave it to me.  It may have been my birthday. Maybe it was to shut me up during her Arabic Soap Oprah.  I like to think it was because I was so damn cute.  I told my wife how much I loved that truck and how I cherished it until about a month later, when I discovered girls.

So here was Saturday, and I talked about fire-trucks.  Then comes Monday, where someone asked me if I got Renters Insurance.  They even mentioned that "You never know.  You can't trust the guy living under you to not start a fire accidently".  Which is funny, because the person living under me is a girl, so I guess "No. I don't need to worry!".

So here was Monday, and I talked about fires.  Then comes this morning (Tuesday).  I wake up because I sense danger.  My "protector of the house and all that is within it" alarm went off and I jumped out of bed.  I hear sirens in the background.  These sirens were not a few blocks away or even down the street.  These were outside my apartment building.  Even more important was the sound of truck doors slamming and the sound of a man yelling to another guy "Joe! It's this one? You sure?"

I rush to the window and look outside and there is the NYFD outside of our building.  Standing in the same spot where my dog lastnight dropped his left over Passover dinner we gave him on Saturday.  I tried to look below me and above me to see smoke and I see nothing.  The fire men (all 9 of them) rush into the building next door (which is connected to our building by the way like soccer players blocking a penalty goal).   They run in with axes and masks and all I keep thinking is "What the hell are these guys doing leaving the siren on while they run inside?  Don't they know people are sleeping in here?"

I stood there and started thinking why the heck has the subject of fire come up in the past few days.  The talk about the fire truck (which I have not thought of for years until my wife asked me about it) and the talk of renters-insurance in the event of a fire, and now...fire trucks outside my window.

I tried to think what all the messages are trying to tell me,  but I couldn't figure it out.  So this afternoon, I bought some ear plugs.