Don’t Take It Out On Each Other

Even If You Don’t Sleep All Night

By Jim Calder

I am usually a very patient person. Unfortunately, like everyone I have my moments and breaking points. This is going to be a full disclosure blog that may be a bit long.  Last night started off as a decent Friday night, but I had no idea of the events that would follow. The traffic home on a Friday night from work can take an hour and a half on a typical Friday night, and two hours on nights when it rains. However, last night there was no rain, and I got home in a little more than one hour.

6:15- Home from work and in the door.
7:30 - Dinner with my wife
8:30 - Surfing online a bit
9:00 - Some cocktails and unwinding
10:00 - We watched the indie film “The Puffy Chair”, which we would highly recommend.

1:00 am - In bed and out for the night … or so I thought.
3:30 am - My wife wakes me from my snoring and tells me that something is beeping.
3:31 am - I say, “what are you talking about … oh it is the battery in the smoke detector, it needs to be replaced- I will do it in the morning.”
3:35 am - We realize that a loud piercing beep would be continuing for every minute for the rest of the night unless we got up and did something.
3:36 am- I take the battery out of the smoke detector in the bedroom … but we still hear beeping.
3:38 am - I try taking the battery out of the hallway smoke detector, thinking that maybe the batteries went on both of them at the same exact time … but still hear the beeping.
3:40 am - I get a step stool and unhook the smoke detector unit from the ceiling. Exposing the wires in the ceiling … but still we hear the beeping.
3:45 am - I repeat this step in the hallway so that both detectors are completely unhooked and detached from the ceiling … but we still hear beeping.
3:50 am - My calm wife (who has work in the morning) and I search the house for 9 Volt batteries, which of course we had none. Why do smoke detectors have to have these odd shaped batteries?

3:55 am - We dress and decide to head out to a 24hr pharmacy in search of 9 volt batteries.
4:00 am - It is freezing in Philly, and my aging car must warm a bit before heading out. However, the streets are dead quiet. It was as refreshing and calm as the eye of a hurricane as I experienced back in Long Island in the early 1980′s when hurricane Gloria rocked us.
4:10 am - We found a Seven Eleven that was open and Melissa ran in for the batteries.
4:20 am - We get back home and are optimistic that we will soon be asleep again.
4:25 am - I replace the bedroom smoke detector … but the beeping continues.
4:26 am - I hit the reset button, most likely pissing off the neighbors.
4:28 am - I replace the hallway smoke detector battery and hit the reset button … but the beeping continues.
4:30 am - I open the circuit breaker panel in our living room and begin to cut the power to sections of our apartment. I cut out that section where the smoke detectors are … but we still hear the beeping.
4:35 am – I realize that I may have met my match. These smoke detectors are unlike any that I have ever seen or battled before. I felt like there were cameras on me and I was Larry David in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I imagined grabbing my baseball bat and smashing the ceiling to little pieces. I was completely puzzled and still in an early morning haze. The smoke detectors were wired into the building security system somehow. I had the complete fire detector in my hand yet … the wires in the ceiling were still beeping.

4:36 am - My wife’s patience is completely gone at this point and understandable so. She decides to call our landlords up. She calls them and leaves a message for the morning.

4:38 am – We set up shop to sleep in the living room as we close the bedroom door … but we can still hear the beeping.
4:39 am – I put on the radio to muffle out the sound but my wife and I start to take our frustration out on each other. I thought that smooth Jazz would be a good sleeping soundtrack but she thought it was too big band style.
In the interest of full disclosure I am not going to lie. There was some yelling and finger pointing by both of us.
While I am changing the radio station in the dark I miss the call back from the landlord. The landlord leaves me a message concerned because she half listened to our message and thought the building was on fire or something.
4:40 am - Melissa demands the phone from me and calls the landlord back. She gets her on the phone and explains the situation but they are confused on the other end and frustrate us more by suggesting that we take the battery out of the unit.
4:45 am – I try one last thing, by completely shutting off all power to the apartment on the circuit breaker … but we still hear the beeping. I contemplate calling our local church and getting a priest out to bless our apartment because, there is obviously something unholy going on in this apartment.
5:00 am – Still wide awake the landlord’s husband calls my cell. He says there might be an emergency number to call downstairs in the hallway of the building. But at this hour we decide that we might as well try to tough it out and get a couple hours of sleep and deal with it in the morning.
6:00 am – Melissa and I apologize to one another for taking our frustrations out on each other. With pillows over our heads we drift off and go in and out for the next few hours.

9:00 am - I wake up and can’t sleep. I put a pot of coffee on and start making some calls. The landlord had emailed me the number of the Security company that installed the alarms so I gave them a ring. They told me that I needed a pass code for the building from the landlord to enter into the panel in the first floor of our apartment. I call the landlords but they don’t know the code. I tell the landlord to call the company and get the code. The landlord calls me back with a code. I go down and try the code … but we still hear the beeping!

10:30 am – I attempt to salvage the weekend a little bit; I make some awesome pancakes for us. Melissa takes a shot at calling the alarm company; they tell her that a technician will be calling us back.
11:00 am - I talk to a tech and he tells me that my landlord has to call and make a service call appointment, that as the tenant I cannot do it. I call the landlord and tell him that they said that he has to call to set it up. While still staying calm, I tell the landlord that I need him to do whatever he can to get someone out here today or we will be staying in a hotel tonight and it will be coming out of what we pay him for this month’s rent. He agrees to do whatever he can.

12:00 pm - A new technician named Roger, who is very calm and polite, calls me and asks me about the problem. I explain and tell him how the beeping is coming from the wires. He tells me this is impossible and I explain that I realize this, but it is happening. He asks where my Carbon Monoxide detector is located. The carbon monoxide detector is a standalone battery powered unit that is sitting three feet away from the smoke detector, on the windowsill.

I start to feel really dumb right about now and voice it to my new pal Roger. The carbon monoxide detector is showing a digital symbol that means batteries are dead. I take them out with Roger still on the phone and … THE BEEPING FINALLY STOPS! Ironically the sound from the smoke detector is the same sound that the carbon monoxide detector makes.

I tell Roger how stupid I feel and he replies, “don’t feel bad Jimmy, this same thing happened to me once and I am a professional.” He ended the conversation by saying … “Have a great afternoon Jimmy.”

Thanks Roger, I intend to do just that, but maybe after a nap. Even though I can still hear the beeping a little bit in my head, I know it will stop soon.

If there is a moral to this story I feel it might be to never take your frustrations out on your loved ones, no matter how sleep deprived, pissed off or frustrated you may get … the beeping is eventually going to stop.

PS: I may not be as bright as I thought I was 24 hours earlier, but I am bright enough to end by saying that I love you Melissa and I am sorry.

Jim Calder is the brand architect and co-founder of ProLong Magazine. Jim was born with the perfect combination of cockiness and self consciousness. He has over 10 years of publishing industry experience and lives and works in Philadelphia, Pa. He currently can be found on the greatest adventure of his life as a newlywed with his wife Melissa. Jim can be contacted via email at jim@prolongmagazine.com

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