Exposition: It's 1999, I'm nine years old, and we just had a security system installed in our home. I was told that the installation included door/window locks which would notify police if triggered. However, unbeknownst to me the fire alarms were set up to directly notify the fire department if activated. During the installation, I was playing my N64, and noticed that the Alarm Company took a long time showing my parents the newly installed smoke alarm and telling them something about pressing buttons on it... this piqued my interest, but went on with my business.
Incident: One day, I was playing N64 (pretty sure it was Banjo-Kazooie) while me and my two siblings had a baby-sitter-- an older girl from our neighborhood swim team who was probably 16/17. I was in the den, where one of those special alarm smoke detectors was installed, and for whatever reason, I decided that I needed to inspect this...
Long story short, I unfurled a paper clip, climbed on top of a stationary bike we had in the den and got my nine-year-old self up to the ceiling and pressed the end of that paper clip into a button on the smoke alarm. WEE-OOO WOMP WOMP BEEEEEP Much to the surprise of everyone in the house, the alarm went off. The baby-sitter ran to see what happened, but found nothing wrong and was, understandably, a bit panicked. She just made us wait in the backyard until the alarm stopped. Those familiar with alarm systems know that they often call when the alarm is triggered to make sure they don't send the police if it's a false alarm... however, the fire alarm contacted the fire department directly, and unbeknownst to us they were on their way.
Result: The fire department came to the house, wielding axes, ready to chop the door down and found a teenage girl with three kids unharmed and eventually got a statement from the sitter and went on their way. While this was happening, a few neighbors and some of the sitter's friends came by to see what was going on... "F!#@ Sh!& GODA$!#" hollered the sitter-- who was at this point very frazzled. Upon hearing her profanity laden outburst, I declared to the sitter "Awww, I'm going to tell our parents that you said all that bad stuff in front of us!!" Knowing we were raised by evangelicals, I guess she panicked... and *for some reason she struck a deal with us-- stipulating that she would not tell my parents about the fire department coming if we didn't tell them either and wouldn't tattle on her cursing like a sailor in front of us.
Conclusion: Of course somehow our parents found out about the incident, likely from our elderly neighbors. And they wanted to know what REALLY happened... So, I concocted a story about playing with a super-bouncy rubber ball which hit the fire alarm and triggered the whole series of events. Then I told them that our baby-sitter agreed it'd be best to let her talk to them about the incident and we should just let her deal with it. In the end, the baby-sitter was fired and her sitting career was tarnished. To this day, no one but me knows that I intentionally tampered with the alarm and struck a deal with the baby-sitter to keep the whole thing quiet. Every now and again, the story comes up and my mother always says something like "That poor baby-sitter just thought she could lie to us and get away with it..." and I smirk a little/feel like an ass inside.
