Coffee Chronicles …and Did I Do That? (in a Steve Erkle voice)

Still smiling and it's 101 degrees out here

Show of hands: how many of you have smartwatches? What do you use them for? Checking the seemingly nonstop texts that come in? Clocking your daily step count? News blasts? Answering your phone when you have mistakenly walked away and left it sitting on the kitchen counter while making the triple-decker Dagwood? Checking the time? All of the above? 

Let me tell you about what happened to me the other night.

I set my watch and phone on the bed and went into the bathroom to prep the shower. Long story short — it takes a minute for the water to heat up because our water heater is on the other side of the earth. 

Anyway, as I was checking to see if the shower had reached polar bear plunge temperature, I heard a totally unfamiliar ring, alarm, or tone coming from the bedroom. I stuck my head through the door into the bedroom just in time for the sound to stop, confounding me further. My only clue as to its origin was that the screen on my watch and phone both went dark at the same time.

A check of both, and they both looked normal to me. No missed call. No new or odd icon to let me know that I’d missed a news flash, earthquake, silver, or amber alert. 

Hmmm. That was weird. 

I called down the hall, out to the HB, “YO! DID YOU CALL ME?”

“NO,” she answered back.

“I MEAN, LIKE ON MY PHONE.”

“STILL NO. DIDN’T YOU JUST WALK BACK THERE? WHY WOULD I BE CALLING YOU?”

In my head — and I need to stress that this was only in my head, because as a married man, I learned early on that I can think whatever I want, but it's best not to verbalize the thought. Because verbalization of such thought may result in some consequences and repercussions. Admittedly, there have been times that I've forgotten this rule; you know when the HB would do or say something so shocking, so outrageous that a spontaneous utterance was inevitable.

Anyway, as I was saying, I thought to myself, “Um, even after 37 years with you…,” then I let the thought trail off.

“OKAY… JUMPING INTO THE SHOWER NOW,” I shouted down the hall.

“YEAH, WHATEVER.” She answered, totally disinterested in my machinations as she scrolled through whatever social media rabbit hole had her mesmerized at the moment.

—

About fifteen minutes later, I plopped down on the couch all clean and fresh in my PJs, pretty freaking proud of myself.

I don’t think I have to tell you that after a day like Saturday, where we set records here in SoCal with our temps and after sweating it out in 100-plus degrees (Fahrenheit), nothing is better than the feeling of a shower and the fresh smell after a day like that. 

The HB looked over at me, much less impressed with me than I was with myself, just as my wristwatch started to vibrate incessantly.

My phone wasn't ringing, just my watch. I looked down at it and then at my phone, and because I thought that it was probably some sort of malfunction, initially, I wasn't even going to answer it, but it was weirdly insistent. After the third or fourth ring (vibe), I swiped to the left to answer it.

“Hello?” I answered quizzically.

“Hi,” a voice on the other end of my watch said. “Your iWatch says that you have had an emergency. We have a deputy outside, and we just want to check and make sure that you're okay.”

The HB and I both looked down at my watch skeptically. I resisted the urge to explain that I was an Android person and not an iAnything.

“Say what now?” I asked, totally unsure if I was being punk’d or not.

The voice in my watch said, “Yes, sir. Your watch sent us an SOS. We want to make sure that you’re okay.”

I visually checked myself to make sure that the HB hadn't stabbed or shot me, and then I looked at my watch and said, “Nope. I think I'm okay.” 

The voice in my watch then said, “Well, sir, we have deputies outside and they'd like to talk to you just to make sure.”

I was still not sure that this was not some type of scam.

ONE: What would make my watch send out an SOS?  TWO: How did they know where I lived? THREE: Are there really deputies outside my house? (...and now that I think about that, what if I was being SWATTED and are A LOT of deputies outside my house?) 

I stood up and went to the living room window, and the voice in my watch asked, “Are there deputies outside?” 

At first, when I looked outside through the window, I didn't see anything, furthering my suspicions. I answered, “I don't think so.” Then, upon closer examination, after my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I took a closer look and, yep, there was a black & white Ford Explorer parked cattywampus in the middle of the street, its front end pointed toward our front door. 

“Oh. Uh, yeah, there is a deputy outside.” I told the voice in my watch.

Barefoot, but properly pajamed, I walked out to contact a fresh-faced deputy just as my watch had instructed me to do, to prove to her that I had not been bludgeoned black & blue by the HB and that there would be no need to gaffle up my bride and cart her away to the hoosegow.

I was talking to the deputy. The watch was talking to me. The deputy was talking to me. The watch was talking to the deputy. The radio was talking to the deputy, and the deputy was talking to the watch, the radio, and to me. It was all very confusing. All the while, I wondered if Arnold Schwarzenegger would be rolling up on a Harley with a shotgun slung over his shoulder and a blonde kid as a backpack.

Deputy Marquez, apparently convinced that the pajama-clad man in front of her was not in need of any help from that first responder, wrote my name in her leather basketweaved notebook and drove off into the metophorical sunset without even leaving me a silver bullet.

I walked back toward the front door, and there was the HB standing there, her hands on her hips, a disapproving look on her face, apparently mad at me. “What did you do?!” She scoffed. Then she asked, “Don’t you think those deputies have better things to do than respond to your little fire alarm pulling self?”

I pointed at the watch. It had to be the watch. I started to protest, but it was of no use. The HB had already turned away and was storming back to her spot on the couch, in front of SNL, slightly irritated that I had interrupted her cat video watching. 

Funny, what popped into my head was those commercials from the '70s where the little, old, blue-haired lady was lying on her kitchen floor, curled up into the fetal position, yelling into her necklace that she had fallen and she couldn't get up.

Ahhh geez! Am I now that guy? 

Oh well, you know what to do! 

Drink ‘em if you got ‘em!

#coffeehousechronicles