Emily Hoffman

    I don't ask for much out of life. It's not as if I'm demanding a nanny or a maid-although I do need someone to get the coffee stain out of my living room carpet. I'm not expecting exotic vacations, fame, huge amounts of money to squirrel away for a rainy day.
     All that I've really asked for in the last week is for someone to find the beep.
     It seems that even when all is calm and quiet in my life, I have to deal with something. If it's not children springing something on me at the last minute-such as Caleb falsely telling me I needed to bring treats to school for his Easter party hours before I was to leave town for the weekend (I am capable of payback) then it's the beep.
     The beeping started about the time Ruth came home from school. I told her she'd brought it with her. She denied this.
     I arrived home Monday from work and was greeted with, "How can you stand that beep all the time?"
     "I've never heard a beep. It's all in your head."
     She denied this.
     "There, there did you hear that? It's coming from the front closet. It sounds like a smoke alarm with the battery going bad."
     I hadn't heard a thing, told her I didn't have a smoke alarm, and suggested, again, it was all in her head.
     She denied this, and suggested to me that smoke alarms would be a good idea, especially near the kids' rooms. I tried not to be offended that my room wasn't listed in the suggestion.
     We looked through the closet but found nothing. Later in the evening I did hear the beep. She looked triumphant when I confessed.
     I proceeded to hear that beep every 15 minutes for the next week whenever I was home and not barricaded in my room. We looked in the closet, we looked in the two-yes I have two-junk drawers in the kitchen. One drawer is small and technically isn't a junk drawer in the true meaning of the word.
     We consulted people. I had a friend in the panhandle say it sounded like a smoke alarm with the battery going bad.
     "I don't have a smoke alarm," I told him. Secretly, I think he was appalled I have no smoke alarms up, but he kindly said that to consider the simplest explanation, or something to that nature. I looked around for something simple, and took out the battery of the clock Josh left on the top of the fridge at Christmas.
     That wasn't it. We searched, stopping whenever we heard the beep to determine its location, finally isolating it as coming from the laundry room.
     A friend stopped by. She said it sounded like the battery on a smoke alarm was dying. I told her I thought I had one in a box somewhere, but it wouldn't have a battery in it. She lectured me about putting smoke alarms up.
     Josh came home on Wednesday night.
     "Hey Josh," I said. "It's great to see you. Find the beep while we're gone, would you?" He listened for a while. "Sounds like a smoke alarm with the battery going bad."
     "I DON'T HAVE A SMOKE ALARM."
     While driving home from DIA, Ruth and I expressed hopefulness that Josh had found the beep, but when we walked in the door early Monday morning, the annoying sound was there to greet us.
     First thing the next morning after waking, for I couldn't stand another day thinking of or hearing the beep, I dug through my laundry room and found the culprit. Being late for work was a minor complication. I found a smoke alarm in the box with the battery in it.
     Ruth laughed as I yanked the battery out. "You really should put that up, you know."