1. If your fire alarm has recently gone off during a chimney fire, it will need its battery changed.
2. If you do not change the battery, the fire alarm will notify you via a series of distress beeps that it is running out of juice. This will occur at 2:30 am.
3. If you wake in fright because your fire alarm is beeping, and, once you determine nothing is on fire, you decide to read for a while to settle back down, the horror anthology you left by the side of the bed will not be the right choice.
4. If you haven’t stocked up on nine-volt batteries, you will not be able to find them on a national holiday.
5. If you are lucky enough to score a nine-volt battery at your parents’ house, do not put in your pocket containing a handful of change and your keys. If you do, all that metal will connect the battery poles, causing the battery to heat to very uncomfortable temperatures in said pocket, which will then cause you to hurl the battery from your pocket after you absentmindedly reach your hand in.
6. All these things could be avoided, if you simply change your fire alarm battery after a fire.
December 26, 2012 at 10:45 am
Sorry you had to have such a hair-raising experience after the trauma of the fire … but you made me laugh out loud with this re-telling. And, having experienced that joy myself, I wonder *why* do the fire alarms always ring out with their low-battery state at 2:30 am?
December 26, 2012 at 10:49 am
They do, don’t they? I have yet to have a battery warning that doesn’t occur in the middle of the night.
December 26, 2012 at 10:52 am
I think it may be vindictive alarm-manufacturers’ revenge. “They think they can ignore my precious alarm? Let them ignore THIS! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!”
December 26, 2012 at 10:57 am
Ha! That’s got to be it!