An Alarming Trend

I don’t own a cell phone. Seriously. No GPS either. No apps. I don’t own an iAnything. The speed of technological change intimidates me, and the prospect of becoming an addicted screen zombie scares the bejeezus out of me. I thought I should confess all this so you’d know exactly whom you’re dealing with.

Some years ago my wife, young stepson, and I visited my wife’s twin sister (Sissy) and her retired neurosurgeon husband in their beautiful new home in Alabama. Sissy, as a birthday gift for my stepson, had arranged for him (and me) to go on a 4-hour guided fishing tour on a local lake. As we were leaving, Sissy gave me a key to the house and said she and my wife were going shopping. When I asked about the house security system, Sissy said they’d be back before our return, but she assured me she wouldn’t activate the alarm anyway so there was nothing to worry about. Then she asked, “You have the code, don’t you?”

“I do have the code—somewhere—in my wallet,” I admitted.

“Never mind. You won’t need it. I’m not going to set the alarm,” she said again.

Our fishing guide said the lake was full of bass and bream, but what we caught was bupkis. It was so hot and the fish were so uncooperative that my stepson insisted on ending the outing two hours early.

When we got back to the house, we saw from the missing car that the twins were still out. I unlocked the door, entered, and then noticed that the alarm control box had begun flashing red. “Oh God, the alarm is armed!” I knew I had 30 seconds to deactivate it, and as the rate of red flashing increased, I rifled in a panic through my wallet for the scrap of paper with the code on it.

Whatever complaints I might have about Sissy’s house alarm, I have to admit that its sound system was state-of-the-art. The entire neighborhood could clearly hear the robotic-voiced message that followed: “INTRUDER ALERT. THE POLICE HAVE BEEN CALLED. LEAVE THE AREA IMMEDIATELY!” I myself think 5 or even 3 repetitions would be enough to scare off burglars, but this warning blared over and over for the next 15 minutes. The decibel level was so high and the repetition so relentless that even if the police had not been called, crooks would still have scrammed just to escape the painful, maddening racket.

Despite the persistent advice to “leave the area immediately,” I decided to stay and face the law. I didn’t want the police to have to come looking for me, so I went out to the end of the driveway, and I begged my stepson to stick close to me since I thought I looked much less suspicious with a kid by my side. I’m pretty sure I put my arm around him.

A police officer did soon arrive, and he ominously parked so as to block my exit. They may call it a security system, but somehow I wasn’t feeling all that secure. I quickly began explaining the situation: have key, didn’t expect alarm to be set, visiting wife’s twin sister and her retired neurosurgeon husband . . . The officer interrupted me at this point and said, “He’s retired and you’re married to twins? You don’t look old enough to be retired.”

It’s funny how the mind works.

My mind went into a kind of paradoxical racing slow motion. “Why did I mention the retirement detail? That’s not even relevant. This policeman is a highly trained lie detector and he right now thinks he’s caught me in a lie. He might be taking me downtown if I don’t start doing some serious tap dancing.” I remember thinking of what I had to do in those terms—tap dancing. I was on a stage. I had a suspicious audience. “Feet don’t fail me now!” In one breath without any pauses I said, “He retired early for medical reasons, and he’s several years older than his wife, and I’m younger than mine.” All this was true, and despite my nervousness, my interrogator bought it and drove off.

“Whew! Thank God that’s over!” I thought as my stepson and I walked back to the house. That infernal alarm had finally stopped, and I said out loud, “That was a close one” as we for a second time entered the house.

The tech savvy among you probably know what happened next, but me, I didn’t see it coming. As I realized a few seconds later, the alarm system included inside-the-house motion detectors. How did I realize this? It was because of a subtle hint, really: fifteen more delightful minutes of “INTRUDER ALERT. THE POLICE HAVE BEEN CALLED. LEAVE THE AREA IMMEDIATELY!”

Those were the actual words, but what I heard was something of a translation—a loud, repeated, insistent message from the Universe: “Bill Spencer, you should be alarmed—because when it comes to technology, you, sir, are an idiot!”