why i'm lucky to be aliveSo this morning, at approximately 7 a.m., I was woken up by a beeping noise. Every minute or so, a loud high-pitched beep would go off. At first I covered my head with my comforter and tried to ignore it, thinking it was coming from somewhere else in the building or outside. But soon it became apparent it was coming from my apartment, and it was a smoke detector.
Problem: my apartment has the highest ceilings on earth. And the smoke detector is just beneath the ceiling.
First I drag over a bar stool. In and of itself, this is a precarious endeavor, the bar stool is tall and wobbly and difficult to climb onto as the whol thing teeters around as i climb on it. But standing on my tiptoes with my arm fully extended above me, the smoke detector is still almost two feet out of my reach.
I climb back down and consider the responsible thing to do: get dressed, call my landlord. Then the smoke detector beeps again, and instantly all responsibility fades as I am determined to beat the infernal thing in a deadly battle of the wits. Fuck my landlord.
I go over to my bookshelf and start taking down my biggest, most solid books - con law textbooks, giant film guides, two 800-page hardcover intellectual biographies of diderot. i pile them up on top of the bar stool. i then place my hand on top of all the books and shake gently, and the stool trembles and the top book slides off the pile onto the floor. my brilliant deduction from the experiment is: ok, i'm gonna have to climb up here delicately.
so first i climb onto my desk, so i can climb from the desks to the top of the books. i put one hand on top of the wall next to my desk, which doesn't go all the way to the ceiling, to balance myself, and now i'm stand on top of a bar stool and about 8 books. the whole edifice is shaking wildly, and i
still can't reach the smoke detector. i step precariously backwards off the tower of books and back onto the desk, in the process knocking over the entire tower of books while i'm stepping off them, but somehow managing to end up safely back on the desk.
but i will NOT accept defeat. this stupid smoke detector will not outwit me!!! i put the books back on the shelves, go back into the living room, and contemplate what else i can pile on top of the stool. nothing seems to present itself....until i remember i have stashed in a storage closet an old plastic end table from ikea, one of those things that you just screw the legs off of. so i get it out, screw the legs back on, put the bar stool
on top of it, so now this ridiculous tower has go to be about the same height as i am, and i climb up the whole thing using the desk again. now standing on my tippy toes with arm outstretched i can actually reach the smoke detector - but i'm not high enough to see it, and i can't figure out how to open the stupid thing, so i'm just yanking on it and pushing on it and pulling on it and nothing is happening. then i press something and it starts SHRIEKING, scares the shit out of me, i jerk backwards, and the stool goes tumbling off the end table with me on it. behind me there is a desk and a bed.
THANK GOD I FELL BACKWARDS ONTO THE BED.otherwise i think i might have split my head open.
the infernal smoke detector is STILL going off.
it won.
i'm calling my landlord.
....it's not even 10 a.m. yet. i hate modern civilization sometimes!
Cheers,
M 
