I’m embarrassed and relieved at the same time.
I was out in the shop cleaning our “emu” yard critters. My husband came out and said, “You have to come. The garage door is on fire.”
I leaped up, trying to get my head on straight about what I needed to do. I asked my husband if he had called the fire department. He said “no.” He said the alarm was going off. I asked him if it was the smoke alarm or the burglar alarm. He didn’t know.
Long story shorter. we’re fine.
My husband has had a series of small strokes starting in 2019. Most of the time he’s his usual ornery self. Sometimes he has confusion. He has a lot of irritability. He has a bit of trouble talking – sometimes more than others. He was taking a nap and the alarm went off. He came to get me.
I got the alarm to be quiet. The display said the garage door had been breached. The garage door was completely open, as it usually is this time of day. No fire. My husband then told me that ADT had called. I asked what he told them. He said he told them to “___ off.” When my mouth dropped open, he said, “I told them we didn’t have a problem.” I clarified – so no one is coming? He said, “no.”
He went back to his chair to try to sleep. I came into my office. All of a sudden, the driveway alarm was going off. I went to the garage, but then heard our front door bell ringing. I ran to the front. It was a policeman.
I went outside to talk to him, embarrassed. ADT had sent him out because whoever had answered the phone was ‘surly’ and unable to provide the verbal code. I explained our situation briefly and apologized again for wasting his time. He was very nice. I was embarrassed, but kind of relieved that if we HAD had a problem, ADT would have called the police and they would have come out. Nice to know.
When I went back in, my husband wanted to know who was here. I explained that ADT had sent the police when he couldn’t give them the verbal code on the phone. He waved his hand at me, waving off the problem. I told him what the code was again, and will do so again this evening. He was more interested in telling me he thought the cat, who gets up on top of the open garage door, had probably set off the system. That may well be true. I’m not at all sure what we need to do about THAT…
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