That cannot be what I think it is.  It can’t.  Not now.
 But it is.  A sound so piercing, so deliberately annoying, that there is absolutely no mistaking it.  Fire alarms.  Now.
 Without my glasses, the flashing light overhead is a pulsating aura, a pale blue glow that flickers against the shiny tiles, turning them from yellow to an eerie green.  I risk a few extra seconds to get at least some of the shampoo out of my hair, nearly blinding myself in my haste, and shut off the water.  The drone of the spray is replaced by the anxious and annoyed voices of students in the hallway, though the screech of the alarms continues to slice through all other sound.
 I wrap a robe around me, grab a towel for my sopping hair (which, at waist-length, is capable of flooding a small foyer drip by drip if not completely dried), and drip my way into the hall.  Pushing my glasses onto my nose with one slippery hand, I see that most people have already started downstairs.  No chance of running to my room for a coat.  At least I should have about two minutes to compose some final thoughts before hypothermia sets in.
 This had been one of mildest winters in Pennsylvania for a good number of years.  So why does my dorm have to wait until the first substantial snowfall to set itself ablaze?  The sharp wind blowing through the entrance hall plasters my thin bathrobe to my wet skin, tangling around my ankles and making coordination more of a challenge than usual.  As I step out the front doors, I nearly choke on the strong wind, specially imported from Greenland for added drama.
 The crowd moves across the frozen lawn as one, fresh snow crunching beneath two hundred feet.  I silently thank God for shower thongs and pull the neck of my robe a little tighter as I shuffle through the snow, toweling my hair as I go.  Many students around me are in pajamas and overcoats, but I seem to be the only one unlucky enough to be in towel and bathrobe.  I’m met with sympathy, but also distance.  I don’t blame them.  If I were in a dry winter coat, I wouldn’t want to huddle for warmth with a sudsy dripper either.
 “You smell nice!” one of my neighbors says in an overly cheerful tone.
 I struggle to withhold the glare longing to cross my eyes and almost lose.  “Thank you.  It’s my shampoo.”
 “What brand?”  Her eyes flick over the remaining white suds drying around my face.
 I pause to take in the white fur trim of her parka hood.  She doesn’t seem to mind the cold at all.  Damn Vermonters.  After a moment I respond, “Garnier.”  I flick a bit of half-dried foam from behind my ear into the snow.
 “My sister uses that.”  She pauses, obviously searching for something else to say.  At last she comes up with, “At least the sprinklers didn’t go off.”
 “Yeah, that would’ve been really annoying,” I reply, wringing a bit of water from my hair.
 A few more moments pass in shivering silence until Campus Security allows us back in.  “And to whoever made popcorn on the third floor,” one security manager is saying as we reenter the front hall, “please don’t leave the microwave unattended in the future.”
 As I drip my way back upstairs to finish my shower, my Vermont friend catches me up.  Pushing back her fur-lined hood, she looks at me with my damp towel around the ends of my damper hair and the sticky shampoo clinging to my ears.
 “One good thing about all this,” she says.  “You got a great story out of it.”
 I pause for a moment before disappearing into the bathroom, then allow a thoughtful smile to slide across my face.  “You know something?  You may have a point.”