This ties in with the blog I made about 6 hours ago, or less. The weather radio worked as promised, at 2 am a loud alarm woke us, however it was with information we already knew, that our county was in a watch, which is not the same as a warning. It is on Amy's side of the bed(the radio, not the watch
), she handled the situation and I went back to sleep, confident our new technology would alert us from here on out if a tornado was imminent. About 4 am, 51 minutes ago, I slowly awoke and gradually became aware of a roar outside. Suddenly gaining my bearings I asked my slumbering wife, quite loudly, "is that the wind?!?!?". She calmly and quite sleepily said, "I think it is". I replied, "I am surprised the radio has not gone off" to which she replied, "I shut it off". My next comment, which managed to get her wide awake was, "Dammit, why did you do that??". Even in her relaxed state, this seemed to irritate her a little, and she grabbed the radio and rather carelessly banged it down next to me.......turning it on before she did......when it was full on, and not in alarm mode, it came across that we were in a "significant weather alert" for 50mph winds, no tornado, BUT that we needed to be alert as this storm could rapidly increase in intensity in a short time. Rather grumpily I remarked to her "THAT is why the radio should have been left IN ALARM MODE, sweetie(gotta throw that in, because she was obviously a little out of sorts over my tone of voice).
As a rule but not always the firemen are paged out to spot when we get in these situations, my first line of defense has been my pager, as I stumbled through the house I found she had also shut it off. As I scrambled to switch on the TV and computer to get the most up to date news about the storm, my better half went right back to sleep. I wonder if I should tell her when she awakens that I went ahead and took cover in the storm cellar, but decided she could just ride the storm out like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, it would be interesting to see her response.
This reminds me of my grandparents and the carbon monoxide detector. Before my grandparents went into a care home I bought them a CO detector. The only phone number they could ever seem to remember in a pinch was my cell number. I awoke one Sunday morning to find two messages from about 2am, both with my grandmother saying "this thing is going off and we can't make it stop" while I could hear my 91 year old grandfather in the background swearing at it. Enough time had passed to definitely have killed them, alarmed I jumped in the truck and headed to their house, to find them quite contentedly eating breakfast. "I threw the damn thing out the door and went back to sleep" my grandfather remarked about the entire situation when I questioned him about it. I retrieved it from the yard and explained that was not the way you handled the carbon monoxide warning.....it happened again 2 weeks later and he did the same thing.
So, this morning I am left to ponder the question, who is less able to grasp technology to make our lives safer, old people of 90+ or women, maybe more specifically my wife? Since she may someday read this blog, I think I will keep the answer to myself.