Today I got a phone call from my elderly next door neighbor frantically asking if my dad was home. He wasn’t. After further inquiry, Barbara (that’s her name) told me that for some reason every smoke detector in the house was screaming and she and her husband Bob couldn’t get them to turn off. I rushed over and spent about 40 minutes running around their house with a giant ladder, ripping smoke detectors out of their vaulted ceilings while Barbara screamed at me through her earplugs and the beeping, “AT OUR OLD HOUSE, WE USED TO BE THE ONES RESCUING OLD LADIES IN DISTRESS.”
My ears are still ringing. Naturally, my brain has taken this chance to rerererereconsider the topic of my own mortality and the fact that someday I will be calling my 20-something neighbor to rip out my malfunctioning smoke detectors.
Time to watch some TV and have a drink.
