"If you must make a noise, make it quietly."
Oliver Hardy
Like the beat, beat, beat of the tom tom*
As I once stated, my career consisted of working for the Federal Government. I think I had a security clearance, but only because I handled word processing documents that may or may not have contained data I should not have shared. If I did have such a clearance they could have saved themselves the time, I always thought, because I am an honest, decent person. A tough person who could withstand all for life and country.
But I re-thought all of that, all through the day yesterday as a smoke alarm began a chirping sound in the middle of the night. . . and continued until it could be silenced by a kind neighbor.
Being the independent woman that I am I had resolved to fix this problem all by myself. But, long story short, a semi-handicapped 76-year-old woman on a semi-sufficient ladder, trying to reach a vaulted ceiling is ridiculous and . . . scary.
The noise was getting so irritating while I was being so stubborn that I knew deep in my soul that if I ever had State secrets, I might finally crack and spill under the repetition of a blasted chirping smoke alarm! I know many of you will laugh, or consider me a weenie, or traitor, or worse, but if you had been here you might have felt the same way.
The other living entity in the house was my beautiful cat and she was petrified. I have never seen her so afraid of anything. We live in the city and have some traffic noise in our relatively quiet neighborhood. We have garbage trucks, and occasionally moving vans, and the normal ebb and flow of noise. We have had storms with lightning all summer and she has prevailed. BUT yesterday was her Armageddon as well, she was pitiful. My proud Russian Blue was absolutely slinking around, to get to food, etc., only to disappear to a place where she absolutely could not be found.
But I should have done better, what with being at what most consider the top of the animal kingdom scale. However, I failed as well. After the stubbornness phase ended with this repeated chirping, the anger hit. I stood on my ladder first with a board, then with a heavier board, trying to whack the daylights out of this tweeting annoyance.
Then reality took over and I called my daughter. She was coming to save me—even had a ladder loaded when I was able to see that my neighbor (my tall neighbor I might add) had arrived home for the day. I asked him for help and he was happy to oblige.
Even he was not able to get to the alarm without first climbing the ladder and then standing on yet another level up (the top of my grandmother’s oak buffet.) Once he had scaled to just the right height he was able to remove the alarm and voilá my trial was over! I was freed, the cat showed up later, and we both settled down last night to blissful sleep with no interruptions.
But I awoke this morning and began to think of my character flaw—I was weak, I was a coward. Threatened with just a tweeting, chirping noise and I might be included in the ranks of such ne’er do wells as Robert Ford (who shot an unarmed Jesse James in the back of the head), the Cowardly Lion in-- the Wizard of OZ, Mussolini who tried to flee to Switzerland when things went downhill in Italy, and I seem to remember that even Marc Anthony fled during the battle of Actium.
The title of my blog entry today is from a Cole Porter song, “Night and Day.” I always thought those lyrics could get on one’s nerve if repeated enough-- the beating of the tom tom and the ticking of the clock-- but no, that was just chicken feed compared to an ongoing chirp of my smoke alarm. So now, I have to worry about speaking of things I should not if subjected to just the right irritant. If captured and so subjected will I tell of all my girlfriends’ confidences, or reveal the family fruitcake recipe, or worse, reveal that Julia Child once made shark repellent for the CIA?--nah, that’s already been revealed.**
*https://www.flashlyrics.com/lyrics/cole-porter/night-and-day-72
**https://bestlifeonline.com/hidden-government-secrets/