THE SURPRISE HOME ALARM
I had been calling my parents for several days and couldn't get in touch with them. I even tried their cell phones and so needless to say I began to worry. Anytime my parents go away or anything like that they always let me know, and I even called my brother to check, but he didn't know of any reason that I shouldn't be able to reach them. I was really beginning to get concerned, so I headed out to my parent's house that Friday. I had a key and decided that if I went in, at least maybe I could figure out where they had gone. When I pulled up the driveway, I could hear the dog barking, so I knew that they couldn't be out of town, or mom would have taken the dog to the kennel. I used my key to open the front door, and to my surprise they had installed a home alarm. I could see the keypad for it and saw the lights flashing, but I was helpless without the code to shut the alarm off. I tried any number I could think of, but nothing and then the thing sounded off and there was this loud blaring noise and then the phone was ringing, I answered the phone and it was the alarm company, but they wanted to code word, which I didn't know, so now I was guessing the police were coming for me, what fun. Well, one of the neighbor's came over to see what all the fuss was about, and when I told them the story, they laughed. They said that my father had gone out of town for a few days, and that my mother had been working up with her friends of the library group all week, they were doing a fundraiser. When the police came, I told them the situation and they were a little skeptical, so we all took a ride up to the library and sure enough there were mom, selling books, obviously surprised to see me and my police escort.
That night as we laughed about the whole thing over dinner she told me about my father installing the GE Simon XT, and that he thought that it was a good idea to have a wireless alarm just for the times when he wasn't home. She said that she just hadn't gotten around to telling me about it yet. When I asked why she hadn't returned my calls, she said that she hadn't gotten the messages, and later that evening we found out that her phone had been off the hook and all the messages were in the voice mail system. It all worked out okay, and I am sure we will have a good laugh on this one for years to come.