I laughed

[simsqu]

So three days ago, I’m sitting in the kitchen having my supper when I hear that horrific sound we all dread, that increases the heart rate, makes you break out in a cold sweat, turns your blood to ice, your bowels to water and your giblets to pate:

“beep”.

WTF?? Ok, calm down. It was probably just someone unlocking their car in the street…

“beep”

SON OF A…

In a frenzy I start searching the house. I begin with the smoke alarms. I stand stock still like a deer listening for the stealthy pad of a tiger creeping up on it.

“beep”

It’s behind me.

“beep”

Now it’s in front of me. I do my usual trick of taking a broom handle to each smoke alarm, knocking them off the ceiling and pounding them into a fine powder with a pickaxe.

“beep”

I recall the last time this happened. It was the carbon monoxide monitor in the boiler room. I locate the monitor and stand silently over it, not breathing.

“beep”

Not the monitor. I recall a stopwatch that fooled me once. I locate it and remove the battery

“beep”

For the next two hours I search the house and finally realise that I can only hear it when I’m in the kitchen, but it’s now late, I’m physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted, so I haul myself into bed and pray for death.

Unfortunately, it does not work and the next morning I wake up. As I get dressed, I convince myself that whatever it was, it has had the night to think it over, and has stopped. I creep down the stairs, and approach the kitchen like the woman at the end of Pscyho approaching the root cellar where she discovers the mummified corpse of Norman Bates’ mother. I can’t hear anything and I relax a little. I start preparing breakfast.

“beep”

The red mist descends. I unplug everything. I rip batteries out of all the remote controls, the back of the TV, the radio, the clock. I check the little transformers on top of the cupboards that run the LED lights. I turn off all the appliances. I move the furniture around. For some reason, I take all the cutlery out of the drawers, and after each action, I stand motionless and convince myself that I’ve found it.

“beep”

I’m getting hysterical.

I abandon the task for the day and start avoiding the kitchen.

The next morning, half-starved and driven mad by thirst I force myself to return to the root cellar.

“beep”

I manage to pinpoint the apparent location. It appears to be coming from the wall between our house and next door. For a brief, crazy second, I entertain the idea that it’s coming from next door, but instantly dismiss the thought as insane. If I can hear it through the house walls, it must be so loud next door that only a deaf or dead person would not have sorted it by now, and I knew my neighbours were neither.
I pressed my ear to the wall.

“beep”

It’s in the wall. That can’t be. Must be an aural illusion. I prepare to take up the floorboards. As I swing the pickaxe above my head for the first strike, sanity briefly makes it through the red mist and I decide: perhaps I should check on the neighbours in case they are in fact dead: killed by carbon monoxide that remained undetected by their low-battery monitor. This is beginning to make sense!

“beep”

I go next door and knock, hoping for no reply, just the smell of rotting corpses.

The door opens. My heart sinks.

“Oh hi J, look, I know this is ridiculous, but I can hear a beep and it seems to be coming from the other side of our wall. I don’t suppose…"

“Oh yes, it’s our carbon monoxide monitor. It’s been going off for three days. I must remember to change the battery.”


//////////////////////////


“Mr S, you have been found guilty of brutally beating to death your neighbour in a savage and frenzied attack with a carbon monoxide monitor. However, having listened to the extenuating circumstances, I have no hesitation in directing the jury to dismiss all charges. Bailiff! Release Mr S without a stain on his character!”

[bungeejumper]

I remember an elderly neighbour telling me, with great satisfaction, that her smoke alarm had been disturbing her sleep for the last week. But that she'd finally solved the problem all on her own. She'd opened it up and removed the battery, and so now she could sleep peacefully.

BJ

[UncleEbenezer]

These disembodied beeps that defeat our normal ability to locate a sound ... should be banned. My dishwasher has caught me a couple of times: if I open the door without turning it off (but after it's finished), it won't beep helpfully at me then, but if I then leave it it'll beep after a few minutes when my attention has moved on.

Perhaps the worst is on the roads. 20th century emergency vehicle sirens, you could figure out (roughly) the direction and distance. Some of those from this century are the disembodied beep: where the **** did that come from, and do I need to do anything (other than panic and get generally distracted)?

And then there's the strange chorus of beeps that indicates a power cut, when all the battery-backed systems in an area helpfully let the world know they've lost power ...

[jfgw]

My dishwasher has caught me a couple of times: if I open the door without turning it off (but after it's finished), it won't beep helpfully at me then, but if I then leave it it'll beep after a few minutes when my attention has moved on.

I knew of someone whose parrot learnt the tune that the washing-machine played when it finished, leading to her thinking that her washing was finished when it wasn't.


Julian F. G. W.

[AleisterCrowley]

The trouble with Carbon Monoxide monitors is that they are often sealed units, which start beeping when the sensor is at end-of-life rather than the battery. There is no easy way to turn them off - my mum's was doing this and I eventually found instructions re how to silence the beast - peeling off the info label on the back and clicking a very small switch through a hole in the case.
My mate had a similar problem and offending devoice ended up in the shed down his garden. It's probably still going.

[bungeejumper]

Perhaps the worst is on the roads. 20th century emergency vehicle sirens, you could figure out (roughly) the direction and distance. Some of those from this century are the disembodied beep: where the **** did that come from, and do I need to do anything (other than panic and get generally distracted)?

I think that's a deliberate "feature". If a driver can't tell where the noise is coming from, he/she is more likely to wake up and give the situation their full attention. It's the same line of thinking that makes local authorities remove all the reflective cats' eyes on A roads in the mistaken hope that everyone will drive more slowly. Whereas, in fact, they just crash more often on foggy nights.

Of course, some drivers will respond to a directionless siren by stamping on the brakes in a panic and stopping the traffic completely. Thus making the emergency driver's job twice as difficult.

BJ

[Mike4]

The trouble with Carbon Monoxide monitors is that they are often sealed units, which start beeping when the sensor is at end-of-life rather than the battery. There is no easy way to turn them off - my mum's was doing this and I eventually found instructions re how to silence the beast - peeling off the info label on the back and clicking a very small switch through a hole in the case.
My mate had a similar problem and offending devoice ended up in the shed down his garden. It's probably still going.

Immersing in a sinkful of water usually stops them...

[UncleEbenezer]

Perhaps the worst is on the roads. 20th century emergency vehicle sirens, you could figure out (roughly) the direction and distance. Some of those from this century are the disembodied beep: where the **** did that come from, and do I need to do anything (other than panic and get generally distracted)?

I think that's a deliberate "feature". If a driver can't tell where the noise is coming from, he/she is more likely to wake up and give the situation their full attention. It's the same line of thinking that makes local authorities remove all the reflective cats' eyes on A roads in the mistaken hope that everyone will drive more slowly. Whereas, in fact, they just crash more often on foggy nights.

Of course, some drivers will respond to a directionless siren by stamping on the brakes in a panic and stopping the traffic completely. Thus making the emergency driver's job twice as difficult.

BJ

I have one particularly scary recollection. I was cycling an urban main road, and happened to be passing (but not taking) the slip road exiting my road to a large roundabout ( https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.40369 ... 384!8i8192 ). Slight downhill, so I was doing maybe 30mph to the cars' 40. Cars both on my route and passing to my left into the slip road. When suddenly - shriek - where the **** is that, and who needs to do what? It's not just me: if a nearby driver had been startled into a momentary lapse it could have been nasty!