I played a lot of tough clubs in my time. Once a guy in one of those clubs wanted to bet me $10 that I was dead. I was afraid to bet

- Henny Youngman

I had one of those moments the other day. You know one of those office moments you'd rather not have had. It all started with my hand on the phone, dialing a call which in this case was long distance so it necessitated the dialing first of a "9 -then a 1"...about that time my Assistant dropped by my desk, and I stopped dialing and hung up. A second later alarms started wailing all over the office. I assumed it was a fire alarm, which since we have numerous false alarms and fire drills - and since my office is on the first floor I really was not all that concerned so proceeded to answer the question. I heard a call from around the corner, someone asking me if I had dialed 911. "No" I said, "of course not".
"Well the system says you did"
Oh oh. I must have dragged my finger over the "1" a second time before I hung up the phone. But it never had time to connect....

So it seems our office is wired straight to a general panic alarm from every phone in the place. Not only does a 911 call signal the usual Fire and Police, but it sets off a series of internal alarms and alerts all the in-house emergency personnel as well. So phones were going off all over the building, all the persons designated to respond were grabbing up their flak jackets, their med kits and the lock popped open on the box on the wall containing the portable Defibrillator. I walked out my door to see a lineup of about ten people all expecting to find me writhing on the floor.

Which all goes to show that the system works. Not that it is necessarily foolproof, as I demonstrated. The only good part of this is that I had hung up the phone before the aid unit was discharged - but the internal alert apparently triggers just by the input of the number. Had I had my wits about me, I should have collapsed to the floor; frankly it would have been significantly less embarrassing than to have to admit that I had just punched in the code and hung up the phone.

I hate technology sometimes. But then I think the Engineer in charge of applying the Defibrillator was the most disappointed of all.