“Well, this is fun!” I said to myself at 4am this morning, as I was teetering on a stepladder, trying to change the battery in my smoke alarm. Why do these things always happen at night? I guess there’s a 50% chance they will.
It was my own fault, really. The blessed machine did warn me it was running out of juice about a week ago, but I doubted it’s sincerity, pounding on the “test/silence” button until it fell quiet again. At least it had the courtesy to wait until 7am that time. I wasn’t so lucky this morning.
As a relatively new homeowner, I’m slowly becoming familiar with my household appliances. I know how to turn them on. I know how to turn them off. But more importantly, I’ve become familiar with the unique alarm that goes off when each one of them malfunctions. After almost 2 years, I’ve heard so many of these alarms I’m a nervous wreck. Now every cell phone beep, every car alarm disengaged outside on the street, every time my oven tells me the dinner’s ready, I jump out of my skin. An alarm may help the sick refrigerator speed it’s way to recovery, but it’s doing nothing for my nervous system.
Remember the days when appliances died slowly and quietly? Now they all seem programed to send out a distress call……”I’m not happy!!” “Something is wrong with me!”. “Attend to me NOW!”. “But it’s 4am and I’m pretty sure nothing going to catch fire in the next 3 hours!” is my response. “Too bad” says the smoke alarm/electric oven/fridge/microwave. “Fix me now”.
If any of my appliances break, I’m pretty sure I’d find out eventually; probably the next time I needed to cook a pizza, get the milk or heat something up. And I’m sure I’d be upset and even sorry that I didn’t know sooner (before I unwrapped the pizza). But I’m even more upset when I’m climbing into bed at night and my electric oven decides that “Error F7” needs to be announced to me and all my neighbors.
Some things in life are really urgent. Fixing the oven at 3am isn’t one of them.
Philomena
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