Car Alarms - Useless Fad Gadgets

I wish I had invented car alarms, right along with leaf blowers and those icicle Christmas lights you see all over the place every year.

Every idiot owns one (as well as a few smart people, too, I'm sure). But there's a lot of idiots out there.

Take the car alarm, for example. Many people who have car alarms installed in their prescious vehicles still haven't quite figured out that if their car is parked somewhere where they can't possibly hear it, it doesn't do any good. How many times have you come running in response to a car alarm to make sure somebody isn't really breaking into somebody else's car?

The thing is, if it's yours, nobody else cares. Who looks? Mostly, people respond to the obnoxious noise factory by an overwhelming desire for the dumb thing to just shut the hell up.

I figure people who set their car alarms in parking lots while at the mall or watching a movie at the theater, just haven't figured it out, yet. I sometimes wonder if they even know that their car alarm has ever gone off - if they've ever heard it. We bought a car recently and didn't even know it had a car alarm, until one day when it went off and I happened to be somewhere where I could hear it. I wondered why nobody was coming out of their apartment to shut the stupid thing off, so I went out to see what car it was. I was floored to discover that it was mine, and then I had to figure out how to shut the stupid thing off!

We haven't used it, since.

Today took the cake, however, as I stopped into Long's on the way home from work, and as I pulled into the parking lot, I could hear someone's horn repeatedly blasting at regular intervals - the characteristic car alarm scenario, but without the myriad of whirs, chirps and whoops.

I got out of my car and walked toward the entrance of the store, all the while the car's horn incessantly repeated its call for help. When I got to the door, I came to discover the car was parked, literally, right in front of the door, such that the horn was blasting into the store. Yet, no one was coming to the rescue.

I meandered through the store for a bit, looking for some shampoo (as a guy, this is a rather baffling shopping experience), and there wasn't a corner in the store where the alarm could not be heard. I even overheard two Long's employees talking about it, one asking if it was a store alarm, the other reporting that it was a car alarm. Meanwhile, other shoppers were simply going about their shopping, minding their own business, thinking about things like, "what shampoo should I get?"

Still, no one came running.

Finally, it fell quiet. The alarm was shut down and peace was restored after several minutes of miserable suffering.

The one fact I failed to mention up to this point was that the car in question - the one parked at the front door with the car alarm blasting - had two very young occupants (toddlers?) sitting in the back seat. Yes, they were alive, and looking rather perplexed and sitting very still (as if, perhaps, this had happened before?).

Now, it's one thing to park your car somewhere where you can't possibly hear your car alarm. If it goes off and you can't hear it, no problem - out of sight, out of mind. Though I have to wonder why they have a car alarm in the first place, and I can't help but wonder if they think maybe they have something of VALUE in the car that they might be concerned about. I think if someone DOES actually hear their car alarm, they might actually respond to it.

So, I really have to wonder why, first of all, someone would set their car alarm when there are live occupants STILL INSIDE? Maybe they don't quite understand how car alarms work. Or, maybe the kids were looking a bit petrified because their parent(s) threatened to discipline them if they moved so much to set off the car alarm. (Hmmm...) Because, what I REALLY don't understand is, if your car is BLATANTLY where not only you, but everybody ELSE can hear it, and you have two kids in the car and the alarm is going off - WHY DON'T YOU COME RUNNING LIKE HELL TO SEE WHAT'S GOING ON?!

It's bad enough there are two small children left alone in a vehicle. Although, perhaps that was the owner's plan all along - leave the kids in the car with the car alarm blasting and they'll be fine, because nobody is going to want to go near the thing.

Ah, well, such is life. Life in the age of technology. Where leaf blowers are your weekend alarm clocks, and unattended (usually) cars sing to each other in distant parking lots. Oh, and let's not forget keyless entry systems that don't work when the battery is dead.

What's next? Self-tying shoe laces? Come on, somebody think of something stupid that everybody would want so I can invent it!