Random Story – Stupid smoke detector

This is just an odd little story from my life.

My first apartment was in this old house that had been split up into six or seven apartments.  My door was on the second floor, but it opened to a set of stairs that went up to the third floor which was all mine.  A few months after I moved in, I got a crappy midnight-to-eight job at a convenience store.  I’m a bit of a night owl, so the hours didn’t really bother me.  Except during the summer.  I didn’t have air conditioning and, since I sleep best when it’s dark, I had thick curtains over my windows so I couldn’t get a breeze and my bedroom became a little oven.  Also, it seemed there were times when I would just be about to fall asleep and some neighbor would decide to mow their yard. 

Anyway, one day I’m about to fall asleep when I hear a faint chirp.  This repeats a few times, and then I realize it’s a low battery alarm on a smoke detector.  I got up and check my smoke detector, but it was fine.  I figured it was a downstair neighbor’s, who probably wouldn’t be home from work for three or four hours.  So I went back to bed, but this chirp was just loud enough to be heard, which means I’d be drifting off to sleep and then every twenty seconds or whatever I’d be jerked back awake wondering, “What was that?”

I eventually managed to sleep, and when I woke up I didn’t hear it anymore.  I went to work, and the next day I was going to bed when I heard it start chirping again.  So I was rather pissed wondering why this neighbor hadn’t replaced the battery.  I went down to the second floor and listened outside doors trying to figure out who it was, so I knew who to leave a note for.  But I couldn’t hear it.  I was a bit confused, but when I went to go back up to my apartment, I heard it again: coming from my apartment.  For the fourth or so time, I checked my smoke detector, but it was fine.  I then went to each room and listened, and I eventually found the source.

As I said, this was an old house that had rather high ceilings.  Well, whenever they updated the heating system, they had run the ducts just under the old ceiling and hung a drop ceiling to cover it all up.  What they also covered up was an old smoke detector just outside my bedroom door.  It had been there for, who knows how many years, until the battery finally died and ruined two days of sleep for me.