The other evening around 3:00 a.m., the gg was awakened from an unusual good
night’s sleep by an intermittent beeping sound.
I knew immediately the sound was coming from the smoke alarm on the
ceiling just outside the bedroom door.
According to the manufacturer, its purpose was to alert me that the
backup battery in the alarm system
needed to be changed. I think the real
purpose is to cause geezers like the gg to be even grouchier than we already are. Let me explain:
To protect me and the missus gg from death by smoke inhalation or
fire, the builder of our house installed smoke detectors in virtually every
room. As everyone must know, their
purpose is to alert the homeowner in the event of a fire in the home so that
the occupants can safely and timely exit the home. Mine are hard wired so that they operate off the house’s electricity, as
opposed to batteries. However, these systems do include batteries as a
backup in case of an electric failure or service interruption.
Now, under what circumstance would you suppose a person needs for an
alarm to inform him that his house was on fire? I can think of only one: when he or she is sleeping, which generally
occurs during the nighttime hours. That
is the only time the gg can think of when a smoke alarm would have value. And I am supposed to take comfort in knowing
that if the electricity to my home is interrupted while I am asleep, the
battery back-up in the alarm will still cause the alarm to be sounded in the
event of smoke or fire. So why at 3:00 a.m. on this morning did I not feel comforted by that fact? Keep reading.
Now, is there any
circumstance that would cause the electricity to my home to be
interrupted while I am sound asleep at night in my bed? Let’s ignore the fact that as geezers there
is no such thing to begin with as a “sound” sleep. So we’re always awake enough to detect the
smell of smoke or feel the heat of fire without the need for an alarm to tell
us. Heck, if there's fire, we can just pee on it and put it out -- that's usually why we're awake in the first place. But I digress. The only circumstance I can think
of would be a storm so intense that it caused the electricity to go out. But wouldn’t a storm that intense cause us to
be awake in the first place? And what
are the odds that a fire would break out in one’s home at the same time we are sound asleep, and when the electricity to the smoke alarm is
out?
.
These smoke alarm manufacturers have thought of everything –
everything, that is, to drive us geezers
crazy. In their wisdom, they added a feature
that causes the alarm device to put out this incessant beeping noise to alert us whenever the
battery in the back-up is dead or is dying and needs to be replaced. The gg is convinced that this feature is
designed to employ only between the hours of 2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. and never
during the daylight hours. Not one time
in the gg’s life have I ever experienced this bleeping dead battery bleeping
during the daytime hours when I am wide awake.
And what did it mean for the gg on this particular occasion? It means that in the middle of the night, the
gg must get out of bed, and through bleary eyes somehow find my way to the
garage, retrieve my stepladder and lug it
into the house without scratching the paint on the side of the car. Then,
set it up under the bleeping
smoke detector after trying to
locate the drawer that holds the extra battery we keep (don't we?) just for this occasion,
and after sifting through our legion of instruction pamphlets to
find the one that tells how to change the battery on the smoke alarm (or
going online at 3:00 in the morning to watch a You Tube video
instructional). And all the while
thinking about how the manufacturer thought he was doing me a favor and
providing a valuable service with this back-up battery scheme.
If the gg ever has another house, you can rest assured there
will be no back-up battery powered smoke alarm system anywhere in sight. In the unlikely event of a perfect storm (no pun intended) that results simultaneously (a) in my home’s electricity being interrupted
(b)at the same time as I am sleeping and (c) at the same time as my house is
consumed by smoke and fire, I plan to be
able to go on sleeping as if nothing was happening. There are already too many things competing to interfere with
my sleep – I surely don’t want or need
to be awakened by something telling me my backup batteries in my smoke detector
are dead. If the worst should happen,
I’ll just assume the smoke and fire are a sign that the gg has died in his
sleep and has gone to hell.
gg
