The kind of PTSD that comes with weekly shootings, teenage funerals and that third world American experience in general, makes phone alerts scary. A chirping and glowing phone past 1 a.m. is a horror film because you know that no good news is waiting on the other side. This is what happens when you grow up in a rough environment, what happened to me a few months ago.
I was in bed reading myself to sleep, my wife next me, "Law and Order: SVU"-ing herself to sleep, until my phone, buzzed and buzzed. Not again, I thought.
