Allow me to set the scene: a family of 5 are sleeping peacefully in their beds in suburbia heaven, dreaming of pizza and the night they get a full eight hours of sleep. It is 3:42 AM.

Suddenly, with nary a chirp as a warning, the impossibly loud, intense wail of a smoke detector wrenches me out of REM, piercing my very soul with its unrelenting screeching. How can something so tiny make such a revolting, earsplitting sound?? It had to be invented by the Devil himself.

As we stumble out of bed, the other smoke detectors throughout the house begin firing off as well. And when I say "firing off," I mean it–it's like a mental firing squad.

Blurry-eyed and scared out of our frickin' minds, we tear through the house, frantically searching for any hint of smoke, fire, or carbon monoxide. What does carbon monoxide even smell like??

Oh, that's right–it has no odor. Great!

In turn, we ran into each of our 3 kids' rooms (why did we have so many children?!? This is inefficient in an emergency!). The kids, somehow, are still sleeping through this godforsaken racket. My four-year-old has her hands clasped over her ears, but is otherwise snoozing, eyes shut tight and mouth hanging wide open.

Don't ask me how she can possibly sleep through this. My eardrums are basically bleeding at this point.

As I'm wrangling the kids out of bed to come downstairs to leave the house, I'm desperately trying to remember my yoga breathing, and suppressing the urge to scream at my husband for not having figured out how to turn off the torture devices wired into the ceilings of what was once a happy and peaceful home.

After what feels like an hour but was more like 8.3 minutes, my husband finally manages to turn off the angry smoke detectors. Oh, did I say turn off? What I meant to say was "ripped the stupid things off the ceiling and took out the batteries."

Because there is no button on them that says, "Hey dumbass technology: turn the f**k off because everything is FINE!"

I took a deep breath, thinking we were finally in the clear. But no. No, no, no. Then the anxiety begins.

With my children around me, bleary and totally unconcerned, the intrusive thoughts start creeping in:

• What if there's smoke in the walls from a faulty wire or something and you just can't see or smell it??
• What if there's a gas leak even though you don't have a gas line but it's somehow coming into the house from an unknown, underground cistern full of natural gas that's somehow leaking into your house through a crack in a floor underneath a piece of furniture that you never noticed before??
• What if there's some other reason the demon alarms went off and you're just too stupid to realize the reason why?

After frantic, desperate searching and a late-night chat with my best friend, ChatGPT, we found no smoke, no fire, and zero evidence of carbon monoxide. We were wrenched from sleep and thrown into a manic state of paranoia for absolutely no reason–wonderful!

So what happened, you ask? Oh yeah, absolutely NOTHING, that's what.

Turns out smoke detectors are "old" after 10 years and one defective one can make ALL the rest of them go off, so one probably just got some dust in it. Or something.

So yeah, we got punked by the universe or some deity decided to f*ck with us. I don't know what we did to deserve that, but it was probably my husband's fault.

All I know is we had a good hour break from sleep last night and my youngest decided it was time to wake up for real, so of course she's hungry and deserves a handful of large marshmallows while the "grownuts" run around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to figure out WTF was happening.

And of course it couldn't have happened in the middle of the day, no, no. It had to be at precisely 3:42 AM because that really is the optimal time for a fun family fire drill!

Well, our youngest loved it and says she can't wait for the next one!