“Your battery is deader than a doornail,” West Virginian’s
say when there is no chance of any power remaining in a battery. The phrase originated
from carpentry. If you hammer
a nail through a piece of timber and flatten the end so it can’t be removed again,
the nail is said to be dead. Doornails would have been given extra strength,
before screws were available, by flattening the end.
Some batteries have
just enough power remaining to let me know it is time to replace them. You know
the ones—smoke alarms. The incessant beep that makes me act like a crazy person.
Of course, it almost always happens in the wee hours of the morning.
My neighbor was
suffering from seasonal allergies and having difficulty sleeping. He finally
dozed off and the unmistakable, “Beep, beep, beep” woke him up. He kept trying
to doze off and finally gave up, went to the garage, carried the ladder in the
house and took the battery out of the smoke alarm.
He laid back down
and, “Beep, beep, beep!” He got up again, stood in the hallway to pinpoint the
location of the noise. He moved the ladder further down the hallway. This time
he removed the entire smoke detector from the ceiling. He carried it into the
garage and smashed it to smithereens with a hammer. Then, he felt better.
He lay back down
and was just dozing off, “Beep, beep, beep!” He had smashed the wrong smoke
alarm! He moved the ladder into the living room and when he got to the top of
ladder he heard the unmistakable beep.
Who would think
one little battery could cause so much angst? Thank goodness last week our
smoke alarm battery started beeping before we went to bed in the evening. The
next day the batteries died in my video camera microphone, CD Walkman, thermostat
on the air conditioning and WII exercise board. After replacing them I had a
lot of dead batteries. I didn’t want to throw them in the trash to release
toxic chemicals into the landfill.
Today’s gift was
to take my used batteries to the recycle facility. Man may never win the war
against the beep of his smoke alarm batteries, but at least he can make a
difference by not polluting the landfills with them.
In Giving,
Robin
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