School fire drills

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Anyone else afraid of them? How do you handle them and do your teachers give you any special treatment? I've been afraid of alarms and fire drills ever since I started having them in kindergarten. I start 9th grade in 1 week. Unlike middle school, where I was allowed to get out before the alarm, the high school will only make sure I am notified of the exact time of each drill so I don't have to worry about them whenever there hasn't already been one in the month. I found a forum that's all about fire alarms and drills at the beginning of the summer, and that's how I ended up here (fear/obsession with FAs is usually linked to AS and many of the alarm forum members hahve it.)

I always tend to get startled when the fire alarm first goes off, it can be annoying at times, especially if it gets repetivive i.e. times where I had to go into the gym rather than outside and it kept going, and going, and going. I think what might help for you is to keep thinking about how it's only temporary, and it'll stop either by you going outside or the drill ending.

My smoke alarm makes me jump if have a naughty fag in my room.

The startle is all that scares me now, especially the thought of being in gym or some other room with an alarm for a drill. Once I'm walking out, I just feel embarassed that I'm covering my ears and nobody else is. I do feel some relief once the alarm is going and the startle is over.

Torn,

Can you please either explain the comment or edit it to show that you are joking?

Thanx Ghotistix. That helps quite a bit. Continue on.

I wasn't joking, I do smoke sometimes? I try my best to resist.

I used to be scared to death of the smoke alarm in my old apartment. Startled me to death so whenever my mom would cook I would insist she'd either shut it off or I would go outside. It was usually one or the other.

At school fire drills, I'm more worried about covering my ears from the loud fire alarm.

I used to be terrified of the smoke alarm and any other loud household appliance. I'd cry and hide in my room or run outside.

I'm not as scared as I used to be, but it still startles me.

I've always been fascinated with fire alarms, and scared of them at the same time. Usually, I'd be more scared of school fire drills if I was in an area where the alarm was particularly loud and/or jarring (namely rooms that had alarm horns in them, and/or where you could hear two different types of horns). And I admit that I'd sometimes cover my ears in anticipation of a fire drill all the way through my junior year of high school (which I'd often get made fun of for). Of course, I'd always feel better after the drill.

I think that my experience during my junior year (where my reaction to the PE teacher announcing a fire drill resulted in "extreme teasing" for the rest of the year), while traumatizing, helped me to fight my fear of alarms a bit more. So now, while I'm still nervous about alarms going off, I think I can contain myself.

Oh, and for anyone else who might be scared of alarms, and are not yet in college - I suggest trying to get into a dorm with a voice evacuation system. Usually dorms that are 6+ stories tall have them. The alarm is usually a tone for a few seconds followed by a voice message, and these alarms are generally a lot less loud and jarring than bells or horns.

Anyone here check out the alarm forum? It's a nice group of mostly Aspies who know a lot about alarms and collect them, too. We talk about different alarm models, drills, places we hear alarms, anything that has to do with alarms. Most of what I know about alarms, I learned from this forum and the fire alarm collection displayed on the admin's main page. You can find me as "ih8alarms" over there. See the link at the top.

Ah yes, I should've mentioned...I'm one of the mods at that forum, and I'm the one who recruited EaglesRNo1 (and possibly others?) here. So yeah, feel free to join if you are interested in and/or scared of fire alarms.

In fact, the entire Schumin Web site is worth checking out. I think a lot of you would like it.[/url]

Those annoying fire alarms gave me the freaks in elementary and JHS. In my first 3 years of grammar school I had no problem with them even though it was a loud kind with a fast rolling beat that was continuous for a few minutes.

In my last 3 years, though in a new school the alarm was more of a series of short, slower-beat siren sounds with pauses (and actually less intimidating than the previous school), I was mellow at first but then I covered my ears a lot, especially when I was informed of a drill, because of the sudden loud sound that bothered me. At least the duck and cover drill bell sounded like the regular recess bell, only a series of ringing for a couple minutes non-stop. The first one I heard, however sounded like a war zone hit.

Middle school had the same bell styles.

In high school we never had fire drills (don't know why, but having a brick building shouldn't be an excuse) but we did have earthquake drills, which were a series of class bell rings. Only once did we have to evacuate for real. My jr. year we had a moderate shaker. Walked to field but it was ust a quick roll call, as administrators were asking the teachers if they had all the students present, and suddenly we were all back in the classrooms or wherever we were supposed to be.

So to make the story short. I too can't stand fire alarms, but the shock is only a quick second, and it only turns to annoying. It stops, it stops, no harm.

I hate smoke alarms, everytime one goes off I freak out... Our smoke alarms at home, make a repetitive noise when the battery runs out and we had no idea what it was so that just makes it all better but yeah, they don't normally go off anymore so its good. And our school has no PA system or anything, if there was a fire I have no idea how they would evacuate because we're in the midddle of building procedures so it would be incredibly hard. Actually, that is kinda stupid.. there's more likely to be a fire in when there's builders building things and stuff. Ugh!