If you’ve ever lived in an apartment or house that has smoke detectors, you know that horribly loud and annoying mechanical chirp, that typically starts sometime during the sleeping hours of the night/morning. First you think you are dreaming. Then it jump starts your heart. Once you get some warm clothes on and start searching room to room to find the source, annoyance sets in. Why didn’t anyone else in the family hear it? Why is it always me searching in the dark for the offending alarm?
Why? Why can’t the battery go bad at 2:30 in the afternoon instead of 2:30 in the morning. I have lived in multiple houses with CO2 and smoke detectors. I can’t remember one ever going bad during the day. Did the manufacturer put a hidden timer in each one set for a specific day and early morning time? Did some disgruntled manufacturing employee say “If I can’t be happy, no one will be”? Again, I ask why?
Maybe it is some quantum physics mechanism that is way over my head. Maybe, it is a ploy of the sleep aids community! Exhaust people with alarms chirping in the middle of the night so they will need to take sleep aids. After over thirty years of smoke detectors, the answer still eludes me. I can only assume this is one of life’s unsolvable mysteries.
I resign myself to being the family chirp quieter and replacer of batteries. I am thankful to have a home, and smoke detectors. I chose to be thankful instead of annoyed. I will try to get a nap in sometime later today. I hope your smoke detector batteries go out during daylight hours!
An Ordinary Life 