Late the other night, our building fire alarm went off. I’m sure I’ve heard it before, but I didn’t remember it being so LOUD! I went into the hall to investigate…out there it was so piercingly loud it made you cringe. I went down the stairs, and was met by another groggy-eyed neighbour in pyjamas coming out of his apartment.

We didn’t smell smoke or see anything amiss. We went to the front door to stare at the locked “control panel”, which had a red light on, but no indication of why that should be. Finally, after several ear-bleeding minutes, the alarm shut off on its own, having “silenced” itself (likely it just got tired of making that racket).

The door to the apartment next to the entrance opened, and a sheepish-looking neighbour told us she didn’t know how, but thought it might be her fault. She had a chair up under the heat alarm just inside her door, and the alarm itself was hanging from wires…she’d been trying to disconnect it.

She tells us she didn’t know what to do — she heard an alarm in her house and she tried to fiddle with the thing to get it to shut up. In the process of “tampering” with the alarm, the whole building’s system was triggered.

Though the loud bell had stopped, there was still something buzzing in her apartment. They have a home security system, and she had its control panel open, and had even removed the battery. “How could it still be buzzing?” she asked, waving the battery at us. It was intermittent, occasionally stopping for a few seconds and then restarting. My pyjama-clad neighbour started poking around the alarm system, and together we tried to pinpoint where the problem was coming from. I said it sounded like it was inside the wall, he thought it was inside the alarm closet, and she was sure it was the fire alarm by the door.

I guess we were all kind of groggy and out of it. Eventually, I noticed that the alarm would stop and start intermittently as we walked around, even when I stomped my feet. Strange! I finally picked up a big paper bag she had sitting near the door, and the alarm stopped. I set it down. The alarm started. I reached into the bag and discovered…a buzzer for the game “Taboo“! It was just a toy; in the bag, some books were resting on top of it in such a way that the buzzer button was depressed enough to sound.

Much embarrassment on her part (after all, having two strange men in your apartment late at night when your boyfriend is still out is pretty taboo, no?). Her home alarm system now had wires poking out of it, no battery, and the ceiling fire alarm was all but disconnected. She’d awakened the whole building and given most of us heart attacks. And all thanks to a harmless little toy buzzer. Her face red, she told us thanks for the help, but…please…just…get…out.

Good night! Bzzzzzzzzzzz….

This entry was posted on Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 13h08 and is filed under Just...life!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.