Smoking Out The Pranksters

(My school has recently installed a proper fire alarm system, and naturally, the pranksters love to set it off. It is quite insane; we have alarms every day, sometimes even several times a day. After a while, we get used to it. This particular day is like any other. We are sitting in the class when the alarm starts blaring. No one even blinks; the teacher just raises her voice to be heard over the noise.)

Teacher: *after a few minutes* “This is taking oddly long this time. [Student], go see what’s going on.”

(The student leaves the classroom, but returns very quickly.)

Student: “The hallway is full of smoke! I think this is a real alarm!”

(Luckily, it turned out to have been just one trash can that someone had thrown a cigarette butt into, which was swiftly dealt with by the janitors. However, we weren’t the only class to have had a non-reaction to the alarm; some didn’t even learn about the smoke until later in the day. It was a chilling realisation that had there been an actual fire, everyone in the building could’ve easily died because we didn’t associate the alarms with danger anymore. The prank alarms stopped abruptly after that day.)