Alexander Graham Bell Overture

(from my unpublished memoir, "The Misadventures of No One Famous")

I intended to plug in my laptop through the open side window and into the outlet by the lot light in front of Barnes and Noble. I knew I couldn't take the chance of doing that in the light of day, so I was waiting for the sun to go down like some sort of literary vampire, who can't begin to sully the unsullied page until there's proper concealment.

I spent the usual few minutes staring into space, and was looking at Gizmo's ears. He is supposedly half spaniel, half Chihuahua, so his ears never decided whether to be perky or droopy. They sort of jut from the side of his head like wings that won't retract.

Pulling myself from this insipidness, I begin to read Carrie Fisher's "Surrender the Pink" and someone's car alarm goes off. It's one of those that honks the horn over and over instead of ringing.

HONK! HONK! HONK! HONK!

...in a cadence a metronome would envy. After a few minutes of this, I stopped trying to understand that paragraph I'd read four times, and wonder when the owner of the car will take care of the noise.

HONK! HONK! HONK! HONK!

That's when a creative soul in another car begins to join in, adding an echoing blast at equally metronomic intervals...

HONK! Honk. HONK! Honk. HONK! Honk.

I start to smile. The Alexander Graham Bell Overture in C Minor.

Then another would-be composer joins in...

HONK! Honk. TOOT! HONK! Honk. TOOT!

And there begins a cacophony of horns about the area. None of them are on their way to Carnegie Hall, but it was good for a laugh.

Alexander Graham Bell Overture