When It Starts With the Beeping

That moment when one of your apartment’s 20-year-old combination smoke and carbon dioxide detectors starts randomly beeping and you aren’t cooking and have no candles burning or anything.  And then you manage to take it down off the wall and shake it and whatever, but it keeps on with the freaking beeping so loud and you take the batteries out and put them back in and it’s still beeping so freaking loud and so you take them out again and look for replacements, which totally aren’t where you thought they were, but you find them eventually in a bag under your bed.  And then you put the replacements in and it starts again with the  freaking beeping so loud and you start to plead with the detector, asking it what the hell it wants, and of course they never answer you and so you take the new batteries out and say ok I just can’t do this right now, I’ll deal with you tomorrow, and you hope there’s no gas leak or anything but what the hell can you do so you put the empty detector on the dresser and watch The Godfather and just hope for the best.