Contrariwise

I suppose it's possible, in theory. We don't get a lot of that near me, though. It's hard to figure out where such a truck might have been. (Since it wasn't trash day.)

There's also something annoyingly coincidental about the idea of something that can beep just long enough to wake you up, and then stop as soon as you *have* woken up enough to listen for it and make sense of it. I *hate* that. (I mean, I know it's possible, whatever the noise is; but what a pain...)

(I take your meaning, though, about how the actual seeming intervals between the beeps may have been quite different than what they seemed to be in the dream/s.)