FALSE ALARM

We had relatives visiting for the week end.  We stayed up late, but we eventually retired for the night.  Two people slept in each of our guest bedrooms and a fifth stayed in our son’s RV.

We were all sleeping soundly when at 3:30 AM, our security alarm jarred us awake.  Ken ran to the control panel to shut off the ear splitting sound.  The phone rang immediately, and our security provider was checking to see if we were OK.  I was close behind Ken and told them we were checking.  The mystery was that the alarm had not been set.  Also, the code was not turning it off.  After several attempts to silence the alarm, Ken was given another code, and we finally had silence again.  I was sure that everyone on our road was awake at this time.  We were told that it was the smoke alarm in a particular hallway.   Ken checked for smoke inside and out.  There was none.

We went back to bed. We were wide awake and sleep eluded us.  Ken decided to get up and check around again.  When he came back, he said that he had called the security company again.  They again told him it was a smoke, carbon monoxide detector.  They said that it was probably a low battery.  He told them there were no batteries in our detectors.  They were hard wired into the electrical system when we built the house.

By this time, my imagination was running wild.  We hadn’t heard a sound from either of the guest rooms, and the doors had remained closed.  I was thinking that I would have rushed out at the first sound of the alarm.  Perhaps they had remained quiet because they were overcome by carbon monoxide.  Ken did not laugh at me, and he assured me that this was not the case.  Finally, he indulged me and knocked on their doors to reassure me.  They were OK, just having some trouble going back to sleep.  I was also disturbed (read irritated) that our son had not come to check on us.

I didn’t sleep much the remainder of the night.

The alarm was the topic of conversation at breakfast the next morning.  The guys in the RV did not know what we were talking about.  They maintained they had heard nothing.  It was hard to believe the noise was confined to the inside of the house.

One thing was for sure:  it was a night our guests will long remember.