at 1:30 am friday night the phone rang. it was the security company that runs the security system for my parents house. my parents are in utah right now. several years ago when their house was burglerized and they got an alarm system. they gave the security company my number as one to call if they could not be reached. they never told me they did. so there i was on the phone, confused by the unexpected call, when i was told that the motion detector had picked up someone on the second floor of the house.
"what should we do?" asked the woman on the phone.
"uh" i replied, i really had no idea what my options were. "what do you suggest?"
"do you want us to send over a patrol car?"
"yeah, yeah, a patrol car. do that."
"okay, we'll call you back if we need some authorization from the scene."
then we both hung up. they never called back. i guess i should have asked for the security company's number. i wasn't really that coherent when they called. i didn't even remember the company's name.
the next morning, i tried to reach my parents on their cell phones. i just got voice mail. a lot of stuff was going on. my brother was visiting. i had a talk cinema movie saturday afternoon. we were meeting my sister for dinner saturday evening. and sunday dr. and mr. pretentious were coming into town for the flower show. should i ditch my plans to drive down to delaware to see if my parent's house was alright?
my parents didn't call back before it was time for talk cinema. so i went to the movie. while i was gone, my father spoke to mrs. noz. he didn't care at all about the potential break it. "don't worry about it." he told her, "so what if they take stuff? we have too much stuff anyway."
later, i spoke to my mother who admitted that squirrels set off their alarm system on a fairly regular basis. "it's always squirrels if the motion detector first picks up movement on the second floor."
