Asking a Worcester Firefighter standing in front of you for
help turning off the smoke alarms from your garage fuse box probably wasn’t the
best idea at 2 am this morning.
{chirp}
{chirp}
I roll over bleary eyed and look at my husband in the dark. “Did you hear that?”
{chirp}
“I think it’s the smoke alarm.” And then I recall it’s that very special high-pitched
sound it makes to alert you to that annoying task of the battery needs
changing. “I’ll get it.”
{chirp}
I stand below the wired smoke detector looking up to make
sure it was the one in our hallway outside our bedroom that was making the
disgusting noise at 1 am. Seconds tick by and then…
{chirp}
I walk upstairs into our kitchen to pull out my pink
fold-away step stool so I can reach the smoke detector because being 5’2 has
never brought me an advantage except for slightly comfortable leg room at The Wilbur
Theater in Boston. But the additional
height isn’t quite enough because when I press the 9-Volt battery flap, I still
can’t seem to reach it to pull out the offending dying battery.
{chirp}
Time to get the big blue fiberglass ladder. I go into the garage and pull out the proper
household ladder navigating around our two parked cars careful not to take
corners too quickly for fear of scratching the paint. I climb up the ladder,
remove the battery and replace it. And
then…
{chirp}
Wait. It wasn’t the battery? I climb back up the ladder and
hit the button “Press to Hush” but really it’s the same button as “Press to
Test Weekly” and now all the wired smoke detectors in our house are shrilling
the most piercing sound in the world while a lady that sounds much better than
Alexa alerts me of “Fire! Fire!” I press
and hold the only big button I can see without my reading glasses on and after
a few long seconds, all the smoke alarms silence themselves.
Well, that doesn’t work.
I rinse, wash, repeat several times with increasing frustration as the
Beagle sleeps curled up next to our bed and my husband stays put because he
knows I’m all kinds of pissed off now and it’s best to just let me handle it. I
can hear our rabbit Mr. Winslow thumping his back paws upstairs in our office
in confused frustration and still I can’t fix this fucking alarm.
{chirp}
I stomp upstairs, turn on the desktop computer and start
Googling. It’s 1:45 am and I’m sick of
this shit. I pull up the Kidde website to read how to turn off a wired smoke
alarm and I learn about the magic reset button.
I’m back up on the ladder with a flashlight, reading glasses and not
finding a reset button on my Kidde model KN-COPE-IC Smoke and Carbon Monoxide
alarm. I twist the unit off the bracket {chirp} and see the electrical wires
connected to the component, but have no idea how to disconnect them. The Kidde site suggests that sometimes the
{chirp} indicates “…it’s time to replace the alarm.” Things I learn while in a
panic: smoke detectors by Kidde have an average lifespan of 10 years and choose
to die in the wee hours of the morning just to fuck with you.
{chirp}
I can’t turn this damn thing off. I need to sleep. How am I going to get to sleep tonight? This is the point in time when I lose my shit
on Google searches and just start typing random search terms such as the
following:
- Wired smoke detector won’t stop beeping
- Turn off wired smoke alarm
- Why does a hard-wired smoke alarm chirp?
- Who do you hire to fix a faulty smoke alarm?
- Electrician emergency calls
- 24-hour electrician
- 24-hour emergency electrical service
- 24-hour electrician 01606
{chirp}
There is NOBODY available in the middle of the night. Despite the filter that Google provides
telling you about businesses that are open 24-hours, the information is
conveniently dead wrong. I call every
single business and get answering machines.
Seriously? I might as well page someone like it’s 1994. At least if they
had a beeper, they’d feel some of the pain I’m going through right now at 2 am.
Remembering how I was making fun of some dumb bunnies on the
local news earlier tonight who nearly died because they were running two
generators inside their house after our recent Nor’easter, I get it in my head
to call the local fire department. (And
no, I didn’t pull a Rob Gronkowski and call 911, thank you very much.) I find
the local Greendale number of the firehouse hoping for some professional
advice.
{chirp}
No answer. Just great.
I visit The City of Worcester website, but their office
hours somehow don’t align to my non-emergency.
I call a different local fire department and a man picks up
advising me my call is being recorded. But at least he’s a live human man and
not a prerecorded greeting. I explain
my situation and all the things I’ve done to troubleshoot the issue. “Well, I can send a truck up.” Ummm.
That doesn’t sound like such a great idea to me and I restate this isn’t
an emergency, I’m just looking for some advice about what residents do in the middle
of the night when they can’t turn off their wired smoke alarm and really,
really need to get some sleep. “I’ll
send a truck.” he says again and hangs up.
I change out of my Hello Kitty bottoms, slide on a pair of
wrinkled jeans and throw on a brown sweater over my hedgehog t-shirt which
jauntily reads ‘Over the Hedge’ because there is NO WAY I’m putting a bra on
for this shit. I’m too pissed off. Ten
minutes later here comes one of the Worcester Fire Department trucks rolling up
with three fire fighters in full gear walking into my garage. ]
The first thing the lead firefighter tells me is, “I can’t
touch your smoke alarm.” OK. I eagerly
explain everything I’ve done to troubleshoot my situation and he stands there
telling me what I already know. I need
an electrician and sometimes even though the smoke alarms say they last for ten
years, they really don’t. Did I mention
that it’s with the commotion of three firefighters standing in my hall way that
the lazy Beagle decides it’s time to rise from his cozy bed and sniff out the
situation? I find myself rambling on hoping
he’ll take pity on me and make an exception to help me out. Having made his
proclamation, he turns and starts heading out through the garage to leave. It’s then that I get truly desperate and call
out, “Well, maybe you can just show me on my fuse panel which switch turns off
the wired alarms.”
{chirp}
Oh, to describe to you the look of sheer disgust on his face
when he stares back at me and says authoritatively, “I am absolutely not going
to do that.” Then it dawns on me that I’ve
just asked a representative of the fire department to help me turn off the very
thing that is meant to protect me in my home from a fire. He continues, “You
can do that as the homeowner, but I’m not touching it. I don’t recommend you do
it either.” I never wanted a five
second time machine so badly in my life, but I can’t take back my request. I thank them profusely and am so embarrassed
that when I go to shut the garage door, I press the wrong button and open the
second garage door by mistake. I can
only imagine their conversation about me as they head back to their fire house.
But I told the dispatcher the situation. Why in the world did they feel the need to
send three fireman to my house in the middle of the night to tell me what they
could have said over the phone?
So, I return to Googling and start calling the bigger
24-hour services that seem super sketchy like Mr. Electric and
QuickResponseElectrical.net which appear first in the search results. I’m that desperate for paid advertisements
from my trusted search engine. I get
through on the phone to Mr. Electric and tell a very pleasant and perky Ashley
of my circumstances. She assures me they
can help and will put a call out to a local electrician who will call me back
shortly. “How shortly? Like in fifteen
minutes?”
{chirp}
She doesn’t know, but promises one will call me as soon as
possible. OK. I turn off my answering machine so as not to
miss the call on my landline and return to the computer. It’s then that I find myself on YouTube
watching videos of men dismantling smoke detectors and others installing them
in barn lofts ‘cause you know, gotta protect the horses. I see this one man
pull out the electrical connection from the smoke detector and marvel at how
easily the device detaches from the prongs.
I wonder….
{chirp}
I’m back up on the ladder and pulling apart the connection
rather forcefully because I’ve got nothing to lose at this point and then
success! Seriously. I did it. I turned it off. God Bless YouTube. I now believe those people who claim to have
taught themselves to rebuild a V-8 car engine from watching YouTube videos. I am so pumped up from my achievement that I absolutely
AM going to try to replace the motor on my GE washing machine when it goes on
the blink. I am a woman and I can do anything with the power of a YouTube
channel!
My resolution to this annoying problem hits me in a flash. I don’t need Mr. Electric anymore. I can just order a new smoke detector from
Amazon and replace it myself. Add to
cart. Problem solved.
I try to call back the 24-hour electrical service company,
but somehow can’t find the right number so I say, “Screw it.” I’m tired. I fixed the problem myself no thanks to the
Worcester Fire Department. I’ll just
turn off the answering machine and go back downstairs to bed. If they call me, I won’t answer because I won’t
be able to hear the telephone from upstairs.
It’s nearly 3 am and the next issue for me is to calm down enough to fall
back asleep. I’m back in my Hello Kitty
PJ’s with a sleep mask over my eyes and just starting to drift off when I hear
it.
{chirp}
What the fuck? You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s disconnected so why is it still
beeping? Did I leave it somewhere in the
bedroom?
I look up to the hanging wires in the ceiling that are no
longer holding in place my dismantled smoke detector and realize that now the 2nd
carbon monoxide device that was placed next to the smoke alarm is chirping. Oh,
hell no.
{chirp}
I climb back up the ladder and twist off the alarm. It is battery operated and not wired to
anything so this should be easy to fix. I pull out yet another 9-Volt battery
and throw it on the coffee table. I’ll
deal with it in the morning. I need to
get back to bed. Just as I’m folding up
the ladder, the goddamned thing chirps again.
How can that be? I took the
battery out! I bring the detector into
the light and see there is an additional section with a screwed in plastic flap
that probably holds another battery which is causing the offensive noise.
Luckily for me, I have a very small screwdriver kit that I bought at a dollar
store that is meant for tiny screws so I unscrew the flap and remove a small rounded
battery that I’ve never seen before but reminds me of the one that’s in my
outdoor garage opener panel. There.
Done. And then, unbelievably…you
guessed it…
{chirp}
Now I’ve got a Zombie Carbon Monoxide detector. I’m guessing it must have some remaining battery
juice left which is causing the chirping-sort of like when a dead body has
residual gas that causes spontaneous pooping on the stainless-steel table at
the mortuary.
The chirp wasn’t as loud as before so I decide to move the
device as far away from me as possible.
I walk into the garage, open the door to my Toyota Camry and place it on
the passenger’s seat. I shut the door
and start walking away, but I can still hear it. I return and wrap it in my slate blue Columbia
Sportwear 590 TurboDown winter jacket thinking that if the coat can keep me
warm in sub-Artic temperatures, the magic technology contained in the silver
lining of this expensive jacket might just muffle the dying chirp of my Carbon
Monoxide detector.
As I lay there in bed, I can still hear the chirp, but it’s
not loud enough to prevent me from eventually falling into a fitful sleep. I snooze for the remaining hours of the
morning dreaming about a broken Roomba and renting an expensive house with a luxurious
infinity pool.
And then it happens.
{chirp}
{chirp}

I’m wide awake. You’re not going to believe this.
The electricity in the house turns off and then on again. My
Google Home on my nightstand resets itself with a pleasant ‘Bing, Bong, Boom’
sound. My Bose Wave Music System spits
out a CD and sucks it back in again. I hear the microwave beep in the kitchen
upstairs and then I hear the familiar persistent Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep of my
home alarm system going off in the garage.
It won’t shut itself off. I must
get out of bed to hit the reset button on the panel to quiet it.
As I walk to the garage to turn it off, all I can think is Fuck
My Life.
I’m sitting here blogging about this awful experience when I
happen to glance up at the 1 message blinking on my answering machine in the
office. I press play and it’s some guy
presumably from Mr. Electric who has left me an indiscernible message at 7:30 am
this morning about my electric problem. I think to myself that it’s ironic that
a 24-hour emergency service company has an electrician that can call me back six
hours after my emergency.
And I think to myself, sometimes adulting is so hard. But that’s adulting for you and sometimes I really suck at it.