I had to replace my coffee maker a short while ago. This one beeps at me, which the old one didn’t. I know, right? It beeps five times to tell me the pot is brewed and ready. It also randomly beeps at me for no apparent reason. Perhaps it’s telling me it has been on too long and needs a coffee break – rather ironic. Remember when a dump truck backing up was the only thing that beeped at us? Ah, yes, the good old days.
The kitchen is a veritable symphony of warning beepers, and interestingly, appliance makers must get the all of their beepers from the same place. They all sound the same. That’s a nice feature in that I rush to the kitchen to find out what’s up and can’t determine what beeped at me. The microwave, possibly? No, nothing in it right now. Although it does let you know when you put something in, start it, and then 30 seconds later when it’s done, because it’s much too difficult to keep track of 30 seconds. Perhaps it was the refrigerator that beeped – that lets me know that one or both doors are ajar. Thank you – that rather makes sense so I’m not cooling the whole kitchen. Our toaster is a few years old, so it mercifully doesn’t beep at me – I just have to listen for that “pop-up” sound, although I’m sure the newer ones have an impressive array of warnings to let you know that it’s ready, it’s burned, or you forgot to press the “bagel” setting. I don’t leave ours plugged in because it’s just another set of blue lights flashing at me, and who needs that pressure? The oven beeps too – when you set the temperature, when it comes up to speed, and if you’ve used the timer, well, that beeps to when it’s done. We have double ovens, so for a more complex meal, we have “surround sound beepers”.
Some warning beepers are really quite legitimate. Our smoke alarms, for example. When we first moved in, it was great because the alarms were hardwired into the electrical system. Fantastic – I don’t have to replace the batteries when I set the clocks back. Then, of course, codes changed and they needed “battery backup’. So, now I’m back to changing the batteries. Should the batteries run down, the units will beep at, usually, 2 AM, to let me know. Her Ladyship has an oxygen machine that lets us know what’s what. It has the volume of an air raid siren when it turns on, or if the power goes off. That’s happened a couple of times, again at 2 AM.
When the First Daughter is home, and she’s brought an entire box truck of laundry because, well, she doesn’t like the laundry room or the machines in her apartment complex. For one thing, they’re not in her building, and for another, they charge her for using them. So, she brings home several large laundry bags – the size of those mail bags in the original “Miracle on 34th Street”. She has a habit of turning on the dryer alert. We never use it when Elizabeth is not here, but she feels it’s important to notify most of Londonderry that her drying cycle is finished. She’s usually lying on the couch wrapped in her puffy quilt, so after my blood pressure and heart rate return to normal, I casually ask if her laundry needs to be changed over. In our long-standing scenario, she’ll respond, “yes, please”, wait about a minute until I’m doing it, then call out, “That’s ok, Dad. I’ll get it.” It’s never a problem except that my entire nervous system is all a-jangle from the sudden loud noise.
Cars today have remarkable warning signals too. What doesn’t glow brightly on the dashboard display will beep. For example, if I fail to engage the seatbelt, it will “bing” smartly to let me know. Our current one fortunately only beeps five times. My dear old one would keep going for about five miles, progressively speeding up to let me know with increasing urgency. The reason I know this is that I am usually pretty good about using seatbelts, but from time to time I would put something in the passenger seat heavy enough to trigger the seatbelt warning. The other joy, and I believe that I’ve written about it before, is the “panic” button. That is strategically placed to be activated at any time by a stray movement, another key hitting it, or just when it feels like an appropriate moment to go off. While I have no data on this, I strongly suspect that panic buttons cause more panic and distraction than they prevent. Never, ever, does one read in the newspaper or hear on the news that “a car theft was prevented by two alert passers-by who heard the alarm go off.” No, no. In the mall, we all hear the alarm ringing across the parking lot and wonder who hit the button by mistake.
Our former residence was out in the country, so we had a comprehensive alarm system put in, with movement sensors and all. It only went off once, to our knowledge. Herself had come home and, rather than entering through the garage, where the keypad was, she came in the front door. You can see where this is going, right? She couldn’t quite get through the house to the back door in time. Lights flashed and a booming voice announced, “GET OUT OF THE HOUSE.” For this reason, we never set the alarm at night on the assumption that I’d come awake during the night, and realizing I’d forgotten to take something out of the freezer, I’d set off the alarms getting to the kitchen. Here in the condo, we don’t really need to be alarmed because we have an alert circle of neighbors. I always figured that if we were away and it went off, they’d have to live with it going loudly for days or weeks.
Some things are a bit old-fashioned, and to me they’re comforting. For example, we have a whistling tea kettle that lets me know my tea water is boiling. Yes, it’s still loud, but it doesn’t set my teeth on edge. This is just a bit of “old school” that I savor. I have no doubt that someday, someone will invent a teakettle that goes off like a nuclear plant when the water is hot. I also love chiming clocks. We have one in the living room, and I can tell the hour – even late a night. Of course, it has Westminster chimes, so I don’t know what hour it is, but I do know that we’re on some hour. We have several more clocks that chime, but Herself is bothered by both the chiming and the ticking of mechanical clocks, so we’ve gone almost entirely digital.
As we continue to create a culture of alarm, with new cars letting you know that you’ve inadvertently changed lanes or that some fool is coming too close in the passing lane, there’s an increasing need to be warned about anything and everything. Here are a couple of beeping devices I fully expect to see in the near future:
A fruit alarm. This will notify that us that our fruits and vegetables have been fresh now for two or three days, and they really need to be made into muffins or tossed. As you know, underripe fruit purchased at the grocery store will begin to turn brown the minute you walk in the front door. This, I find, is particularly true of bananas. They start to turn on the way home.
A newspaper alarm. Yes, this won’t be needed by most people, but I still get and read the morning paper. A beep or two to let me know the paper has arrived would be helpful, so I don’t venture outside on a cold morning only to find that either it hasn’t arrived or more likely, the delivery person has thrown it into the bushes where I’ll need one of those 8 foot golf ball retrievers to reach it.
A “child alarm”, telling you that your child has left lights on for four hours in an unoccupied room, or that they’ve used the bathroom and didn’t flush. Perhaps something like a smoke alarm, but that discerns unpleasant odors would work well here.
An “Amazon Alarm”, that informs us a delivery is in the area, and that shortly, there will be a package for us on the front porch, by the back door, or somewhere close by. The sheer number of arrivals we expect each day makes this a necessity. Oh, wait. I think there’s one now. I heard a soft thump on the porch. Yes, by golly, there’s a truck backing away. In the summer, I can here a “crunch” as they back over one or two of my container gardens.
A “stalker alarm”. You’re alone at night in a poorly lit location, walking along and peering in fright over your shoulder. Hearing footsteps alone is enough protection. Suddenly, via that handy beeper in your pocket, you become aware that someone is behind you and closing fast. When they get up to about six feet behind you, the beeping turns on a siren that wakes up everyone and everything for miles around. The stalker runs off and you are safe – until the police arrive and you’re charged with disturbing the peace.
A “dead body” alarm. From time to time, we see in an episode of “Law and Order” or “Midsomer Murders” that a body has gone undetected for days or weeks. While I’ve not had this experience personally, I can tell from the detectives’ reactions that it isn’t a happy time when they come upon these victims.
The first uses of alarms – police cars that go whizzing past us, fire engines off somewhere in the distance that cause us to look all around – those are a distant memory. Our senses are now assaulted by a wide variety for beeping sounds inside and out. If you’ve ever spent any time in a hospital, either as a patient or visitor, you tune out the alarms while at the same time wondering, “Shouldn’t someone be checking on that?” With my limited medical background, it won’t be me. Have to go now – my coffee maker is beeping again. I need to check the instruction manual to find out why.
I'm Thinking...No! 