Thank G-d it wasn't an Elite

A few nights ago I was awakened in the small hours of the morning by a high-pitched, rapid-fire staccato beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep! As usual, no one else was awakened.

What the?! I thought. I know that sound...what...that is the low battery alert for some kind of Motorola pager. Previous employment experience has made me sort of an expert on these sounds. And then the weariness overcame me once again and I passed out.

The next day in poking around the house I found the culprit. One of these.

I still have a few old pagers laying around, mostly in junk boxes left over from when I worked as a pager repair tech, and some of them would probably work if they had service. My son had found one and put a battery in it so he could play with it.

That was a weird way to be awakened at one o'clock in the morning.