“Of all the warning sounds that animals make, I think the one that’s the least effective on me is a kind of clicking noise.” – Jack Handey, “Deep Thoughts” as seen on Saturday Night Live
The last home we lived in was almost 20 years old and had two smoke detectors – one on the main floor and one upstairs. The only reason we had one on the main floor was because I saw a Dateline NBC episode once where a firefighter had been to visit a lady’s house for a random incident, noticed she didn’t have a smoke detector and felt so strongly about it that he brought her one the next day as a gift. (You know what happens next, right?) A couple of days later her house caught on fire and if it hadn’t been for that smoke detector on the main floor her baby would have died. I went out and bought an additional alarm that day. It was easy to install – I threw a battery in it and stick it through my awesome popcorn ceiling which resulted in my carpet looking like it needed some quality time with Head & Shoulders shampoo.
A lot of things have changed in our new home, beginning with the fact that we now have eight, EIGHT! smoke alarms. At first you might think, “Oh how nice, now if little Johnny ever tried to sneak some reefer into his room, or light ants on fire with his magnifying glass through the sun shining through his window, or if little Jane lights a candle while using nail polish remover or tries to burn her trash instead of taking it to the garbage WE WILL KNOW ABOUT IT.” But what you are NOT thinking about as you survey and admire the safety feature of EIGHT! smoke alarms in your house is, “Hey, I can hardly wait until it’s 2:30 in the morning and one of those bad boys decides that it is DONE with those batteries.” Done! With a capital ‘D’. And for the love, why is it always 2:30 in the morning when they decide this?
It was indeed 2:30 a.m. when I was awakened by this incessant beeping sound. The thing is, however, it only beeps ONCE in ridiculously ineffective increments of a minute apart making it virtually impossible to locate the origin of the problem. *Beep!* I thought it was coming from the guest room so I walked in there, stood under it and waited that crucial minute to be sure. *Beep!* Crap. Wrong room. Maybe it’s the one in the hallway. Move. Stand. Wait. *Beep!* Nope. It’s definitely coming from downstairs. Move. Stand. Wait. *Beep!* Definitely NOT coming from downstairs. Back upstairs I go to Samantha’s room. *Beep!* Not Samantha’s room. Cory may have heard me say something bad and he was roused from his slumber. “What are you doing?” I quietly articulated in whispers my genteel strategy for trying to locate the offending &$%!*$# alarm. *Beep!* A-HA! I am pretty sure the sound is coming from Drew’s room. Move. Stand. Wait. *Beep!* Bingo! That was it. All I had to do now was yank the battery out – then I would deal with it tomorrow and go back to sleep. Open. Yank. Close. *Beep!* “What the…?!” I had the right alarm, but it was not enough to remove the battery because the blasted piece of crap was hooked up ELECTRONICALLY. The battery is just a backup for the electricity!! Very well, I’ll just replace it with one of the 87 batteries we keep stashed in the drawer downstairs. Let’s see…what do we need here…a NINE VOLT? Interesting. We don’t seem to have ANY of those. Double AA’s? Triple AAA’s? I have a plethora. Nine volts? Our lightsabers don’t require 9-V’s so we don’t happen to have a drawer full. It was now three o’clock in the morning and Cory said, after putting on his red cape, “I’ll just run to Wal-Mart and get one.” Now that the whole family was alert and would not be sleeping until the alarm was officially SHUT UP, we decided to use our time wisely and read the scriptures. Just kidding. Who does that? I have to be honest though, I DID go in the other room and say a prayer – I specifically asked that the battery would fix the problem after Cory got back because, and I am not exaggerating when I confess that I said, “If this doesn’t work then somebody is going to die, and I don’t want to go to jail.” Call me sacrilegious, but a girl has to do what a girl has to do.
Cory returned, prayers were answered, and we finally went back to bed. Thanks to Costco I now have a sleeve of nine volt batteries in the drawer just waiting, and I am DARING for them to do this to me again.
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