Shopping List: Eggs....milk.... bread.....and a SLEDGEHAMMER!

We had a little disturbance at our house last night that I'm sure will be the topic of future dog walk encounters around the block. This little incident rates right up there with the time when my family lived in Turkey and my sister, Karen, was trying to light the pilot light in our cockroach-laden gas oven. (No cockroaches were harmed in the retelling of this story. However some deserving critters who hadn't skittered away once the oven door was pulled open, probably died when it happened.) Karen, who was 10 or 11 at the time, had suffered quite a shock but no physical injury aside from scorched eyebrows (and that account could be confused with another scorched facial hair incident. Writer's embellishment. If you want scientifically proven, historically accurate facts, start your own blog.)

Attempt after attempt to light the match failed until finally Karen struck it just so and BOOOOOOMMMMM! I didn't know our rotund upstairs landlord could move that quickly but before the final "MMMMM" of the boom finished vibrating the building, her plump little calves made their way down those marble steps and that was definitely her callous fist knocking on our door. We didn't actually see her because we were hiding but when my father opened the door, unmistakably it was her. In a sing-songy, rage repressed voice, she asked "Do you have something to tell me, Mr. Kehoe?!!!!" That has been a punchline we've used anytime there's a loud noise or some other mishap, such as the one we had last night. My neighbors aren't going to ask me if I have something to tell them the same way a landlord would but they are going to be curious.

If they didn't see the huge ladder truck parked out front with the spotlight singling out our house, as if it had done something wrong and was about to be questioned by the authorities, I'm sure they heard the smoke detector alarms, whose volume controls were set on "wake the whole freaking block" rather than simply "wake the people in THIS HOUSE ONLY". The boys and I could hear the alarms from inside the minivan, where we called and waited for the fire department to help us because Skye and I couldn't figure out HOW TO MAKE THAT HORRIBLE NOISE STOOOOOOOOP!!!!! And it was gaining on us.

In our wee-hour unexpected emergency, we couldn't agree on how to handle the situation either. Our wee-hour emergency training is limited to requests for water, food, medicine, comfort after a nightmare, and on rare occasions, fetching a puke bucket. We have highly developed parental sonic hearing and are trained to wake up when a bedroom door creaks opens or when someone is standing next to our bed watching us sleep, hoping we'll wake up and comfort them. We have no proper training that would enable us to think clearly under EXTREME auditory duress.

There was an unacceptable time delay on my part for responding to this particular "emergency". When I heard one detector go off, I knew it was in Little Skye's room and I suspected that it must have been the humidifier that set it off. And I knew it was under control because I heard "Oh shit!" from Big Skye who had been sleeping in Little Skye's bed with him and had probably just fallen asleep after Little Skye called him in because he'd had a bad dream. I figured "how many sleepy parents does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" and I rolled over. But when a second alarm went off it was my turn to say "Oh, shit!" and fumble into action. I ran around the house looking for an object to wave at the smoke detector in the hall outside Skye's door. I finally found the rug that all the shoes were on at the front door.

So there we are. Skye, in his birthday suit waving his arms frantically at the detector in little Skye's room. Me in the hallway waving a rug as if trying to hail down an airplane because we're stuck on a deserted island. The noise was unbearable and our efforts were futile. Alex left his room with his hands over his ears when his detector went off, too. This noise was like a virus, spreading throughout the house. I grabbed a stool and was trying to pry a detector from the ceiling to yank it from its power source but Big Skye thought that would upset the detectors even more. He made me get down. I couldn't listen. I had to run to the source. The fuse box.

When we had the kitchen renovated, the city code requires the electrician to install electric smoke detectors throughout the house. They have battery backup and they communicate with each other. So if one goes off, it sets all of them off. Another thing we learned that night was that if the power goes off, the batteries will keep them kicking. And kick they did! I was in the basement, flipping the circuit breaker marked "smoke detectors". That set off ALL the alarms in the entire house. There was no place to go to get away from the noise and that's when Big Skye ordered me to take the kids out to the minivan while he got clothes on and he fought the wild beasts alone.

Eventually the ladder truck showed up and six, count them, six firemen filed up to the house where I gave them the lowdown.

"The humidifier in my son's bedroom set off the smoke detector. They're electric. So they all went off and we can't figure out how to make them stop!"

"Are you sure there's not a fire?"

"I checked every room."

No one of them looked as frazzled as we were. They didn't even look tired. They looked refreshed, calm, and heroic. They filed into the house and straight to the back where the bedrooms are. Then spread out from there. I was at the end of the line and paused in front of Skye. Somehow in all this "emergency" I found it in me to be silly and held up six fingers to Skye who was standing in the doorway to the kitchen watching this parade walk by of men in blue uniforms plus the clown at the end. Skye looked at my fingers and thumb and the smirk on my face. I wanted to whisper "Six! Our tax dollars at work!" But I refrained because I would have had to yell it in order for it to be heard over the smoke detectors. And knowing my luck I'd yell "SIX! OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK!" the exact moment that the firemen got the smoke detectors to fall silent. But we had already yelled ourselves out disagreeing on how we should make the noise stop before the hunky firemen showed up.

We argued in voices the smoke detectors overrode about whether to yank them from the ceiling or leave them alone altogether. Skye was in the leave them alone camp and I was in the yank them from the ceiling camp (and beat them with a sledgehammer!)

Turned out it was a faulty smoke detector. The firemen left it on Skye's desk. When Big Skye went in there to check it out, it was still rebelling, trying to bleat a few last outbursts. It was possessed and was making last ditch efforts to communicate with the other smoke detectors "Don't go down without a fight!" In our post emergency assessment we wondered whether we should have also called a priest instead of the fireman. But numbers were important in this situation. I'm sure we couldn't have gotten six priests.

We managed, after all the excitement to go back to sleep. The boys woke up at their usual 7am. Skye and I slept off the adrenaline until 9am. Just after waking he was heading to the store to get some eggs and asked "Is there anything else we need?"

"Yes! Milk...."

"Yea?..."

"Bread....."

"Yeah?...."

"......AND A SLEDGEHAMMER!!!"