Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Of Slats and voices in the box

Hi gang. How is everybody doing? You remember how my Nana went to the Bridge and the Grand Pops fell down and hurt his Cock Ox bone? Well Daddy made an agreement with Grand Pops after Nana went to the bridge. They agreed that Grand Pops had one free fall. After that he was going to have to get a medical alert bracelet. This is really cool. When you fall down, you press a button, and it sends you help. I need to get a pee alert system for Pocket. When she needs to pee....well you get the idea.

We all went to Grand Pops house when the package arrived from UPS: Underdog Postal Service. There were no packing peanuts. This was a huge disappointment. "Pocket take a note" I commanded as I was going to rectify this situation immediately but she had got her nose stuck on the postal tape.

Daddy took control of the situation. He needed an electrical and phone outlets. He momentarily forgot that whenever he stepped foot in his parent's house he was transported back to 1892. His search took quite some time.

Somehow every electrical outlet in the home was attached to a light switch. If you flicked on the one in the bathroom you turned on a blender, the upstairs TV and the toilet flushed. If you flicked on the one in the living room the dryer turned off, the sump pump began to work and a guy in Milan had his garage door shut. He finally found an outlet that was hidden behind the bread box and no one had rewired it. (Those of you who guessed that inside the bread box was a key to a Dodge Spirit, a package of Chiclets and some rolls swiped from the Olive Garden in 1998 give yourself five points.)

He plugged everything in exactly how it said on the instructions. Mommy suggested that maybe he put one of the lines in wrong. Oh, silly Mommy! Daddy then pressed the button that would send the signal to the Lifeline people. Suddenly a loud voice began to yell out from the machine: "EMERGENCY. EMERGENCY. DANGER WILL ROBINSON. OLD MAN DOWN. OLD MAN DOWN BY THE RIVER HE SHOT HIS LADY. HELLO! OLD MAN! NUMBER FIVE STILL ALIVE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"

Daddy was picking up the phone, turning it over, looking at the bottom. "It should be calling someone by now," he said. Mommy suggested he put the lines in the phone wrong. Silly Mommy!

Grand Pop was getting anxious over the loud noise. Pocket and I went to hide under the bed in Nana's closet where Grand Pop's slept. But someone had taken the mattress and box spring off. What a dirty trick that was. We looked up and all we saw was slats. SLATS! What the hell are slats? I don't know but I doubt they were created to provide protection.

We ran into Daddy's old room and there were only mattresses. What was this old man doing? No wonder he kept falling down. He was trying to dethrone the Mattress King. We ran back downstairs and found a bed in Grand Pop's office. We trembled together while Grand Pop yelled at Daddy to turn the thing off and Daddy tried to talk to someone in customer service about why it wouldn't shut off. Finally, Daddy pulled the plug, on the machine, not on Grand Pop. And it continued to yell: Emergency, Emergency. It had a battery back up. Well that's good to know.

Daddy turned the phone over again. He decided he may have put the lines in wrong. He changed them. Then he hit the big button of doom again. The screaming emergency voice came on. But it only repeated four times before a voice came on. Daddy had figured it out all by himself! Well, no, but if he reads this it will make him feel good.

The voice from inside the box then told Daddy to go to different rooms and say hello so they could judge if they could hear him everywhere. They told him to stand in the living room, to stick his head in the toilet, to lay at the bottom of the steps and moan lowly, and to run around the yard quacking like a duck. Man, humans will do anything a voice inside the box tells them.

Mommy had found us under the bed and had leashed out, wanting to get out of this house of horrors as badly as we did. But there was one more test. Daddy had to push the button on the strap that Grand Pop wore on his arm. "Hold on babies," Mommy said holding us close. Daddy pushed the button and then he and Grand Pop turned into Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.

Oh I'm just kidding. The alarm went off again. We got very tense in Mommy's arms. Daddy told the voice in the box that it was just a system check and then we went outside with Mommy and away from that house of horrors. A little while later Daddy joined us.

When we got home Daddy rolled the TV stand outside and left it on the porch, still don't know why.

So my pup friends, if you ever see a talking box with a big button run for the nearest bed to hide, and make sure it had more over your head that slats.

SLATS!

2 comments:

  1. Oh My! I would have no place to hide in the house of horror's as I can't fit under the bed anymore. I am glad you found a place to hide until the "all clear" was called!

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