I Concluded I'd Been Dreaming

I concluded I'd been dreaming.

I had been sound asleep, and heard something that sounded similar to the tones of the Emergency Broadcast System coming from my wife's cell phone which was next to her side of the bed.  My wife didn't even hear it; she was still sound asleep.  So I got up, picked up my wife's cell phone (which was next to the digital clock that read 3:03) and looked for what the issue might be.  I saw nothing on her cell phone indicating anything except that a relative of ours had made a couple of Facebook posts several hours earlier.  We've been through a rainy period of time with sudden thunderstorms over the past 6 weeks or so around here, so I looked out the window to see if it might be storming--or at least if a storm was approaching.  The sky was clear and I could see the moon.  So I went into the living room and turned on the TV to one of the local channels that shows news--at least scrolling it on the bottom of the screen if it's something really important.  There was nothing there.  That's when I concluded that I must have been dreaming...

...Until late this afternoon when I was  at work and someone had mentioned that there had been an Amber Alert issued at 3:03am.  A number of people heard that comment, and several of them mentioned having been awakened by the alert.  I now realized I had not been dreaming.  I found it odd, though, that my wife's phone would sound that alarm, but not show anything.  People said that the Amber Alert was for someone in a town almost exactly 200 miles away.

When I got home, I mentioned it to my wife, who--as I stated before--had slept right through the alert.  She confirmed that she hadn't heard it, but said that it was on her old cell phone--the one that is no longer connected to our cell phone plan, but on which she sets the alarm clock in the event her regular cell phone alarm has a problem (something that has indeed happened a couple of times).

Odd.  Only the cell phone that is not connected to our cell phone plan received the alert (my phone did not receive the alert either), and it was for a situation 200 miles away at 3 in the morning.

As of this time, I don't know any more about the Amber Alert (I honestly haven't tried to look it up this long after it was issued).  I hope that the person has been located and is safe.  But if these Amber Alerts are going to be effective, they should generally be more localized, should have information about them at least scrolling at the bottom of local television station programming, and should be going to phones that are active--not ones that are no longer connected to any plan.

I'm sure I'm missing something here, but in all honesty, waking people up at 3:00am 200 miles away is likely to cause more resentment towards Amber Alerts--and get people to ignore them more and more--than it would by concentrating on getting the message to people who are actually awake (i.e., maybe watching TV) and who are not so far away.