We went to Wisconsin and asked my mother to feed our daughters fish. Then we forgot to unchain the from door lock. My mom couldn’t run down the gangway and in through the back door before the whole house started screaming. Therefore, my mother now has an unnatural fear of coming to our house when we’re not there. Thus, the alarm system works perfectly fine for me.

Early on we had a series of false alarms too, although these I can’t blame on the system… they were entirely the result of our own idiocy and laziness.

There was the time we failed to properly explain the control panel to our houseguests, who couldn’t deactivate the alarm before the police arrived.

There was the time we forgot to fully close and lock the front door, which slipped open and activated the alarm. That time, the police left us a note after they’d searched our house. It read simply, “No intruders found. Dog on premises.”

Then there was our third strike, which finally shamed us into responsibility. It happened as our entire neighborhood gathered for the annual block party. I’m better socializing over drinks than potato salad, so we decided to ditch the block party and head to a friend’s place in the city. We made it a little more dangerous by arming the system and sneaking out the back door. Which we did unseen. Unfortunately, we marched right back to our garage, opened the door, got into our car and took off. Which, um, activated the system. By the time we were just a few blocks away, the alarm was wailing and (again), the cops came. This time, though, they had to break through the barricades at the end of our block, navigate the charger through our neighbors’ children playing in the street, and perform some quick suburban recon.

Quite possibly, we are the very people we want kept out of our house.