THE BURGULAR ALARM 11/06/06

We lived in a three-floor house which had been hastily chopped up into flats. My mother, step-father, and I [and later on, a half-sister] lived on the first floor, my step-father's parents [and sometimes a younger brother of his] on the second floor, and another brother of his and wife on the third floor.

The house was robbed and after that, my mother lobbied to get a burgular alarm. It was big and bulky and had a main control on the small back porch. If the alarm went off, after checking that the house was not being entered by a burgular, one had to use a key to access the box to turn it off. The alarm was shrill and sounded like a school fire alarm. It went off often. Not because of burgulars. But because of things like wind, vibrations of cars driving down the street, and heavy breathing.

I still remember my mother waking up and announcing, "We've been robbed!" She was careful to describe to me what a 'cat burgular' was. The image of a masked man hiding behind curtains for hours and hours until a family went to sleep stayed with me for years.

The police came. They dutifully took down statements from the adults. I was ignored and perhaps that was just as well. I had woken up to someone lighting a match and looking in the closet. I thought it was my mother but it musta been the 'cat' burgular. I do remember a voice telling me, "Go back to sleep." And so I did.

The big german shepard dog in the hallway upstairs slept through the whole robbery. The robber had succeeded only in grabbing some [a significant amount of] money from my step-grands bedroom. Teevees, stereos, jewelry-- all lay untouched. My step-grandfather moped for a few weeks. The dog remained but was not trusted again. And we lived with that bumbling alarm which pierced our routines at the most inconvenient times.

That alarm was still there when I moved out. I did look back but that was one of the things that I didn't miss.

sapphoq on life