Sunday night everyone was upstairs watching TV except Don. Larry had managed to connect the TV to Netflix so the group was busy getting an English fix. Suddenly and loudly, an alarm went off and kept ringing, beeping, blaring. Don was downstairs running up and down the hall shouting to upstairs for help with the alarm. The consensus from upstairs was that it was the building fire alarm. The group divided into upstairs (generals) and downstairs (feet on the ground troops).
Being a good ex-corporate employee, Debbie went downstairs to get her shoes in preparation to exit the building. She suddenly found herself enlisted as part of the ground troop. Debbie found Don with his hands over his ears running back and forth shouting to the upstairs. It was a lot louder downstairs but really hands on the ears, who does that? (Debbie thinks standing on the bottom of the stairs). The generals shouted down to check the smoke alarm downstairs. So, Debbie and Don headed for the smoke alarm. Debbie rounded the corner to stand directly in front of the alarm and was hit with the full force of the sound of the alarm. She had never heard anything so loud in her life and her freaking ears were on fire. Don grabbed the smoke alarm, tossed it to Debbie and who ran for the door like she had an un-exploded bomb ticking down to zero. Debbie realized as she ran with the smoke detector the following:
A). What was she going to do? Throw it in the street? (Debbie has been watching too many action based movies)
B) The noise had not changed location thus not it was not the smoke detector.
Debbie threw the smoke alarm on her bed, covered her ears with her hands, and started rocking back and forth.
AND THEN IT STOPPED!!! Total time elapsed 5 minutes.
No one knew why it stopped. The generals decided that it was not such a bad experience and thought that Debbie and Don might be exaggerating a bit. Debbie and Don gave them the stink eye and retreated to their rooms. This is what is commonly known as the calm before the storm.
After about 15 minutes of peaceful calm, the alarm started again in full force which caused people on the bottom floor to cover their ears and run up and down the halls again. All of the upstairs eventually came down to investigate and Debbie is rather pleased to report that they too turned the corner into the full force of the alarm, covered their ears, and ran back down the hall. As a safety measure, front line people were issued toilet paper for their ears. (Larry needs to work on technique as his toilet paper hung like streamers from his ears) After consolidating all the intel (the freaking alarm blaring in the background the whole time), the following was decided:
- It was the bugler alarm in the apartment going off
- Every room was equipped with loud speakers to enhance the volume. (Who puts a loud speaker in the toilet? No self respecting thief would hang around after that alarm went off. They too would run for the hills hands over ears)
- The neighbors were probably going to yell at them soon.
- The most important fact – No one knew the code to turn the alarm off
After about 15 minutes of blaring “ears on fire” noise, Joyce called the owner who didn’t have the code either. “It just couldn’t be the bugler alarm as it was from the previous owner and not turned on.” (Listen lady, can’t you hear it over the phone because everyone is pretty sure that the alarm can be heard at the Arc de Triomphe about a mile down the street? You have a misconception that it is not turned on and that is why we are shouting into the phone now) Still the alarm blares on.
AND THEN IT STOPPED AGAIN…. Total time elapsed 20 minutes of “ears on fire” blaring alarm. The group is happy to report that not one neighbor complained, the owner brought over a remote to turn off the alarm, the alarm has not gone off again and Debbie thinks that she may have PTS.
Thank you for the visuals!