Idiots Survive

We were snoozing so well. The house was settled, dark and quiet.

***snore***

When, suddenly, the security alarm went nuts and yanked us all from bed, propelling us toward the keypad to see what was wrong. Kids were stumbling down the stairs, dogs were freaking out, cats were rushing underfoot searching frantically for hiding spots and we were all crashing into each other.

Mark and I made it to the keypad before the girls who, upon seeing us, stumbled to the living room and fell into opposite ends of the couch, burying their heads under pillows, thinking...what? Oh, to comprehend the inner workings of a sleepy teenager's mind.

In the meantime, my husband and I, blind without our glasses, had forgotten to grab them in our haste to turn the alarm off and couldn't read what the stinking alarm was screaming about. Back to the bedroom. Feeling in the dark for glasses. Stepping on unseen cat tails poking out from under our bed. All to the music of dog wails, certain we won't notice them in their crates and free them in time. The phone rings. The alarm company is calling to verify the FIRE!!! and announcing they are dispatching the firetrucks.

Turns out that one of our smoke sensors upstairs chose 4:17 in the morning to go bad and send a signal to our system that there was a problem. Our system alerted the monitoring company which alerted the fire department. False alarm (whew!), wide awake and, suddenly, with a LOT of company...coffee anyone?

After the firemen verified there was no fire and headed back to the station, Mark and I set about shutting the house down again. We covered the girls snuggily in their spots on the couch, reassured the dogs they would live to see the sun come up, and gave up trying to find the cats who had long since abandoned their hiding place under our bed. As our heads fell against our pillows it dawned on us that the alarm could have been triggered by an intruder, the likes of which we were totally unprepared to encounter, rushing around the house like idiots.

We have a family plan in place for dealing with emergencies. We realized this morning (much to our chagrin) that it assumes we will be alert, reasonable and methodical as we implement it. Not to mention functioning with fully corrected eyesight.

Not practical for 4:17am wake up calls.