You know what really frosts my flakes? Smoke alarms.
Now don’t get me wrong. They save lives. Noble little plastic heroes screwed into the ceiling like guardians of common sense.
But when they decide to die, they don’t go quietly. They go out like a diva at the end of a farewell tour.
I was jolted awake this morning by the frantic chirping of my smoke detector taking its final breaths at 4 a.m.
And of course it’s a Kidde alarm, as in, “Are you kidding me?”
This thing chirps every 32 seconds. Not fast enough to deal with quickly. Not slow enough to ignore. Just enough time for you to think, “Maybe it’s done.”
But, then…CHIRP.
So there I am, half asleep, stumbling through the house like a zombie in gym shorts, on a mission to locate this tiny plastic menace.
I finally find it. So, now I just need to shut it off, which should be simple, right?
Wrong.
The instructions are printed in microscopic font, like they were designed for ants with reading glasses.
I’m squinting at this thing thinking, “Do I need a magnifying glass to read this, or a an exorcism to stop the chirping?”
Naturally, I assume it just needs a new battery. That’s how it’s worked since the dawn of time. You swap out the battery, the world keeps spinning, everybody goes back to bed.
But not this one. No, this one has decided it’s too good for batteries.
Instructions say the entire unit has to be replaced when it reaches the end of its life. The end of its life? What is this, a goldfish?
And in bold letters it proudly proclaims it’s made overseas. Of course it is. Why replace a $2 battery when you can strong-arm people into buying a $35 replacement?
That’s not a smoke alarm. That’s a subscription service with sirens.
Meanwhile, it’s still chirping.
Relentless.
Mocking me.
Nothing works.
So I do the only reasonable thing left.
I wrap it in a blanket, stuff the blanket in a box and put the box in the backseat of my car parked in the garage like I’m hiding evidence from a crime scene.
And since smoke alarms are required, they’ve clearly taken on the personality of the government. They are loud, persistent and impossible to understand when you actually need help.
I’m Grandpa Grumpy and, at my age, if something’s going to wake me up at 4 a.m., it better be breakfast or a winning lottery ticket.