Smoke Detectors

This post could get weird, bear with me though--I think I might actually have a thought worth getting out for once!

For the last couple of days the weather here in Minnesota has been pretty amazingly tropical. Tuesday we reached over 100 degrees F (that F might stand for more than one word... just sayin'...) and we had 80% humidity. It was epic, but I was determined to use as little electricity as possible--no window air conditioner, and I had stubbornly refused to turn on the ceiling fan, contenting myself with merely throwing open all the windows & downing huge amounts of water...

Then the smoke detector started going off.

That's right, the title actually has something to do with this post too! I might be getting the hang of this whole titling thingummy...

But anyway, the smoke alarm went off. I was much perturbed, there was no way I was getting carbon monoxide poisoning (did I mention all the windows were open?), I couldn't smell any traces of smoke, let alone enough to set off the alarm (asthmatics have a pretty keen sense of these things...). My next guess was that the battery must be dying.

Following my hunch in the midst of the teeth-rattlingly pierce screams that were emitting from this fiendish device was not as simple as it sounded. I first had to find a chair that was tall enough for me to be able to read the miniscule camouflaged writing on the thing, then one that I could actually manipulate it from atop. Once I did that, I had to discover how to take this contraption off the ceiling, all while trying not to give into my impulse to just take a mallet to the whole thing to get it to shut up--because though I did find the "shut up button" (idk what it's really called, but that's what it became in my head...), it took me a while to figure out that while 1 push means "shut up", 2 means "scream more" and 3 means "scream louder". That was exciting to discover...

Once I finally managed to wrest the thing from the ceiling I realized that the problem couldn't be the battery... At least, I really really hope not, because it's hard-wired into the ceiling...

Only one option seemed left. I had heard of such things happening, but never actually witnessed it myself. Could it be possible? Apparently...

The humidity in my apartment had set off the smoke detector.

I conceded defeat to the weather, and finally turned on my ceiling fan, but to no avail. For the next couple of days I found myself periodically plagued by this thing, hoping in vain that the humidity would break, that the fan would keep the thing happy, that maybe--maybe--I'd be able to get the freaking demonic plastic nightmare from hell to shut up for the last four hours I was alotted to spend in bed before work.

No such luck.

Sooo, yeah... filed a work report with maintenance... Hopefully my neighbors will forgive me (I know for a fact I'm not the only one who's been having this trouble...).

But while thinking on something to write about today, I was reminded of an old friend I wish I could talk to & thought to myself: "There's an excellent object lesson to be learned here..."

Forgive me if this tires you, but I'm about to indulge in a (possibly ludicrous) metaphor. Maybe it's an allegory. I dunno yet, we'll hafta find out together...

Suppose that friends & family, and I'm talking about the close kind here, not just your casual "I see you once a week at the gym and we say hi" acquaintance--suppose we are a sort of smoke detector/alarm for each other. In our true and proper function, isn't that supposed to be how the Church works? We help each other out, we alert each other to danger both without and within ourselves--at its best, that is how the Church should function.

But suppose something goes wrong. Suppose we become terrible at communicating, and find ourselves unable to tell each other what we mean. Suppose we become so obsessed with appearances that we forget what we are supposed to be warning each other of and become simply an annoying shriek leaving others scrambling to shut us up.

On the flip side, suppose the problem someone is warning us about is something we don't want to hear. Suppose they are trying to tell us about one problem, but we don't think that's something that needs fixing right now, or we think it can wait, or we think we have everything under control and why don't they mind their own business? It's not until later when we wake up with a headache that we discover "oh, perhaps they were warning us of a legitimate problem".

Suppose the problem isn't necessarily independent of the smoke detector and the hapless victim of its shrieking, perhaps there's a problem between the two parties. Perhaps the breakdown of communication can only be manifest in pain, and that's the only way either party will admit that there's something wrong & becomes willing to do something to fix it.

Anyhoo, closing coffee shop. I'm off to hopefully not have to listen to Shrieky... we'll see.

Wave at strangers. Maybe they're not so strange after all... ;)