How Alexa Saved My Life

It was a dark day. Not literally dark…it was daytime. And Florida. So it was pretty bright and humid. But it was dark for me. Why? Because I was trapped! Trapped in a room with no way out! What could I do? Let me tell you a story about how Alexa saved my life.

A Few Minutes Earlier…

I was home alone. I didn’t need to leave for work yet, my wife was already gone, and my kids were at school. As one does, I was passing the time by drinking some coffee and folding some laundry. With the laundry done. I took the basket back to my bedroom to return it to our closet. As I opened the door, I pushed it to the side with the basket and stepped inside. A moment later, I heard the sound of something sliding followed by a loud bang of something hitting the ground.

“That didn’t sound good,” I said out loud to myself because I talk to myself when I’m alone. Don’t judge me.

I went back to the door. It would only open a few inches. My hand and a little of my forearm fit through the opening. My whole body was out of the question. I was stuck in my room!

The Explanation of the Sounds

The door to my bedroom opens out. My bedroom is a later addition to the home off of what, at one time, would have been the back porch. This means that there is a partial wall just in front of my door. Far enough away to allow the door to fully open. It looks exactly like this:

Behind where the door opens is a cubby space just large to fit a folding six-foot table. That table lived behind that door for years without incident. Until today.

When I pushed the door open, it hit the folding table just enough to dislodge it. It slid forward, pushing the door closed and wedging itself between the door and the partial wall.

I Was Trapped!

It took me a minute to figure out what had happened. I couldn’t get my hand far enough around the door to slide the table out of the way. If I grabbed the table, I could only get a couple of fingers on it and the pressure from the door pushing on it was too much to overcome. Pushing on the door was pointless and the hinges were on the other side of the door so I couldn’t remove those.

Usually, I have my phone on me but, because I was doing laundry, I had left it, and all my other electronics, in the other room. I was locked in my bedroom without means of calling out, sending an email, or texting.

Well, I wasn’t without ALL electronics. There was the echo dot that we have in there. Could Alexa save my life?

Alexa to the Rescue!

We mostly use Alexa to stream music or white noise, occasionally to answer a question, and solely to keep our shopping list up to date. But years ago I had experimented with using my Echo Dot to send messages to my parents’ Echo Dot. It was fun for about five minutes but I quickly forgot about the functionality.

Until today.

I sent a message to my parents to come by the house. They got it on their phones as they were walking to their car and they showed up about five minutes later (they live very close). I was free with quite a bit of laughter over my predicament.

Yes, it was a silly way to get trapped in my room but it showed just how much our technology has changed our lives. Sure, there were other ways of egress. I could have climbed out of one of the two windows in our room. But I didn’t want to. Plus, I had about half an hour before it became dire for me to be free so I figured I had time. So…maybe Alexa didn’t save my life. But she did save me from being slightly inconvenienced and probably ruining one of my few remaining jeans crawling through my window. And that’s not nothing.