SOMETHING EVIL
October 22, 2003
Chirp! Chirp! Chirp! Silence.
10 minutes pass.
Chirp!!
10 more minutes pass.
Chirp! Chirp!
Why is it that fire alarms lose their power during the wee hours of the
morning, and during the middle of the week? Last night was no exception. At
3 AM, my fire alarm decided to wake me from a deep sleep -- warning me of
its impending doom. At first it chirped for a full minute, and then paused
for another ten. A few more chirps were enough to drag me out of my comfy
bed to look up 10 feet to the fire alarm above me. I weaseled a dinning room
chair directly underneath the contraption, but I was still out of reach. I
then had to move my sofa chair under it in order to reach the nuisance.
So picture it, there I was, standing in nothing but my boxers on top of a
chair at 3:20 in the morning, desperately attempting to stop the sound
disturbing my slumber. Once I had a decent grasp of the alarm, I twisted it
clockwise. Nothing. I twisted it counter-clockwise. Nothing. There were
directions regarding the removal of the alarm, but they were written to
small to read from any distance further than two inches. I then thought my
grip wasn't tight enough, so I dug under my bed for a piece of rubber to
assist in my new-found mission. I stood back on top of the chair and twisted
and cursed and cried. Nothing.
By the time I crawled back down, the chirp had subsided. I went back to bed,
thinking it was just a hoax. 15 minutes later, just as I was about to snooze
again, the chirp sounded again. I returned the chair to its helpful position
under the alarm and climbed back onto the arm. I twisted. I rattled. I
knocked and I shook. Nothing. That is, until I ripped the alarm out of the
ceiling, exposing its guts to the room below.
The next objective was to unhook the alarm from the wiring. I felt like a
secret agent disarming a delicate, yet dangerous bomb. With the cut of the
right wire, or the disconnection of the wrong line, my life would have been
over in a flash. Questions consumed my mind. Would cutting a wire cause the
whole system to begin to wail, thus waking ALL of my neighbors? Would I get
shocked and die? Were the cameras out and my final minutes being recorded
for a showing on an upcoming episode of "Six Feet Under"? Who knew. Who
cared. The chirping sound was driving me nuts!
I carefully disconnected the wiring from the main component and climbed back
down with a sigh of relief. However, the relief was only temporary as the
chirping continued. Like a risky organ transplant, I had to replace the old
battery with a fresh 9-volt energy source. But where to get one? I didn't
have them stored around like candy at an M&M factory. I searched my
apartment frantically like a drug addict looking for his stash. I needed my
fix. I needed to get rid of the mind altering chirp with the soothing sound
of silence.
I eventually found a 9-volt battery in the back of a drawer, and sat down
onto the bed with the alarm in my lap. To my horror, protecting the back of
the casing was a plastic casing. I determined the casing was supposed to be
attached to the ceiling, while the main piece simply locked into place by
turning it onto the casing. That was not the situation before me.
Apparently, after the last tenant left, the painters decided to pull a cruel
joke and caulk the WHOLE alarm to the ceiling; therefore rending any
twisting action useless. The caulk also glued the mounting case to the main
component, which disabled me from quickly switching out the batteries.
Another search ensued for a screw driver to pry off the final culprit.
Needless to say, I broke the damn thing before it finally detached itself.
With relief in sight (as well as a 4:45 reading on the clock), I switched
out the batteries and then switched off the light to return to sleep.
Silence.
Chirp! Chirp!
The evil would not be thwarted! Because I had not returned the alarm to its
home high above on the ceiling, it was still without the final connection
and deemed itself useless. I was not about to move the chair again to
attempt the reattachment operation, so I quickly grabbed the alarm and
headed into my closet. I thought of throwing it down the trash chute
(reminiscent of Phoebe's ordeal on "Friends"), but instead, I shoved it to
the bottom of my dirty clothes hamper and happily shut the closet and
bathroom door behind me as I made my way to the bed for the final time.
I glanced at the clock, and it read 4:50 AM. As a cousin of the fire alarm,
the clock alarm could not be trusted either since it was to wake me up as
scheduled at 6 AM. I decided it would be wise to show up late for work, so I
called in to my boss at 5 AM... so she would note the timestamp. After
hanging up, and internally cursing my upstairs neighbor (who had been pacing
this WHOLE time), I fell asleep.
No more chirps.
For now.