Someone wise and commonly quoted once said that ‘frequent midnight fire alarms bring you together.’ Okay, so maybe the actual quotation was a little different, but for the residents of UAS’s Banfield Hall, it is unquestionably true. Frequent midnight fire alarms do bring us together: against the idiot that set it off.

But alas, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Like all great stories, this one started with a book. It was the late during the night of the first Sunday of Spring semester, and I was still getting settled into my new home. I had discovered the miracle that is Interlibrary Loans, and I was deeply engrossed within the pages of a mystery novel.

When the fire alarm went off, I did what I always do when surprised by incredibly loud, irritating noises: jumped several feet in the air and made a frightened squeaky sound. I’ll admit that at that point I had no idea what it was, but I knew my sensitive ear drums couldn’t take much more of it. I snapped shut the book and without donning shoes or a coat fled out into night.

When we finally filed back into the building after standing out in -20F weather for about  half an hour, I was borderline hypothermic, and I wasn’t the only one. I didn’t regain full feeling in my toes for a couple of days, and I noticed a lot of other Banfielders limping about in the days following our first alarm.

Now, I didn’t hear this from any reputable source, but word on the street has it that the first fire alarm was actually pulled by some desperate loser hell-bent on subjecting us all to the torture of exposure to an Alaskan winter for his own evil purposes. In all truth, it could well have been an accident. But I spent enough time in high school to know that that’s not what makes a good rumor.

In any case, the rumor had enough time to circulate that by midnight next Sunday, when we once again found ourselves ‘out in the cold,’ as it were, that there was a certain suspicious air hanging over the crowd. Any one of us could have been the one that pulled it. It was like a closed door mystery or any of a number of idiotic television shows about people stuck on islands. You never know who could be the murderer… ahem, fire-alarm puller.

‘But no,’ the verdict was handed down. This time it was a bag of popcorn accidentally cooked for 10 minutes. Or maybe that was the third fire alarm. After the first five, I stopped paying attention.

Here in Banfield, we’ve been through a lot together. Through wind, rain, subzero temperatures and snow, we’ve toughed out midnight fire alarm after midnight fire alarm. We’ve learned to heave a sigh in perfect unison. We’ve become hard of hearing from repeated exposure to noise louder than 90 decibels. We’ve endured frostbite, chill-induced pneumonia, and bear maulings (well, okay, maybe not bear maulings). 

In fact, about the only thing it seems we haven’t learned is to clean our toasters regularly and to never microwave anything longer than 10 minutes. But this wisdom will surely come in time. In the meantime, I am certain that in my life I will never, ever forget the time we were forced … I mean lucky enough to spend together, huddled for warmth in the housing parking lot.

“There is nothing,” said one bleary-eyed Banfielder with sagacity beyond his years as we filed back into Banfield one night, “like the smell of burnt toast in the morning.”

I’m inclined to agree.