Happy Fire Prevention Month by Mark Corrigan
“Repent! For the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” (Matthew 3:3)
This story is true. Just ask Kathy.
As our smoke detector shrieked a piercing series of desperate beeps, I searched frantically in my sock drawer for a replacement nine-volt battery.
“Why is it we have a three-year supply of every battery imaginable! Double A, triple A, even CR2032’s!” I yelled. “But not a single nine-volt!”
“Of course we have nine-volt batteries,” said my wife, Kathy. “We bought a box of them at Costco last summer.”
“Well, they’re not in the sock drawer!” I yelled again, angrily shoving aside the cheerfully-colored footwear impeding my quest.
I slammed the drawer shut.
“This always happens. ALWAYS! Whenever I need a nine-volt battery, I can NEVER find one! It doesn’t happen with double A’s or triple A’s. Oh no. Only the nine-volts. Doesn’t matter if we stock up years ahead. When I need one, they disappear. Vanish. Sayonara, nine-volts.”
I went on to chronicle how this scheme had existed since my youth. Kathy feigned interest.
“You know, I’m starting to believe this is no accident,” I said. “This is some sort of cosmic joke. Some prank God is playing on me. I think God has deliberately set up this nine-volt scam just to point at me and laugh, laugh, laugh. A practical joke from on high!”
Kathy had stopped listening.
The doorbell rang. I could barely hear it over the acute keening of the smoke detector. I opened the front door.
There was no one there. There was only a plastic baggie Scotch-taped to the glass storm door.
In the baggie was a nine-volt battery and a note. The note read, “God wants you to know you are loved. Happy Fire Prevention month.” It was from a neighborhood church.
We still have the nine-volt battery. Wanna see it?