As the president of the Extremely Loud Doorbell Company, I am frustrated and puzzled by the many charges that have been levelled against us.
Perhaps the most common charge is that our doorbells cause people to go deaf. This is patently untrue, for reasons I can’t think of right now. I can only point to our service policy, which guarantees that if, for any reason, a customer’s hearing begins to decline, we will visit his home and turn up the volume on his doorbell.
Some people blame us for the recent upsurge in cat frightenings. But, as I testified before Congress, cats are frightened by many things, not just doorbells. A person in the household may take up the bagpipes, for instance, or become fascinated by the Old West and call people to dinner with a chuckwagon triangle; or a large, burly man may join a hockey team and play goalie, and then forget his house keys, so that when he comes home he has to go around to the sliding-glass patio door and pound on it with upraised fists, while still wearing his hockey mask, shouting, “Let me in! Let me in!” Any of these things can scare a cat.
Can a child ringing a loud doorbell over and over cause someone to have a brain aneurysm? Common sense says no, and so did our expert witnesses. Yet this is the type of crazy accusation we face.
Some people even claim that our doorbells can cause nails and screws to come loose. This is absurd. In fact, testing in our laboratories shows that the intense sonic blast emitted by our doorbells actually drives nails and screws in deeper.
Perhaps the strangest charge is that, during wakes, our doorbells can cause the deceased to twitch or jerk. One plaintiff even claimed that a body suddenly opened its eyes!
These false allegations insult the memory of my great-grandfather, Hiram something or other, who started our proud company nearly a hundred and thirty years ago. He came to this country with only ten dollars in his pocket and three thousand dollars in his suitcase. He observed that, when a gentleman went calling and rapped his cane on a front door, it often took an annoyingly long time for someone to answer. That’s when he founded the Extremely Heavy Cane-Head Company. The company prospered, and he grew rich. But he could not have foreseen the advent of thin, easily breakable doors.
The company foundered, and was rescued by my grandfather, who came up with another invention: the peephole. Unfortunately, Grandpa made the peepholes larger and larger, which eventually defeated the whole purpose. Sales plummeted.
My father decided to take the company back to its roots. He focussed on the doorbell, experimenting with powerful pneumatic compressors and metal alloys that could vibrate hundreds of times a second. But he could not get the doorbell to be loud enough. Then, one day, while out shooting pheasant, he hit on the answer, and rushed home. When the button was pressed, it would cause a shotgun shell to discharge, slamming the clanger into the bell with unbelievable force. Thus was born the Extremely Loud Doorbell.
No longer would people have to wonder whether someone was at the front door or if an ice-cream truck was driving by or if someone had dropped a fork in the kitchen. Now they could be sure—“Shotgun Sure!,” as our motto says.
The Extremely Loud Doorbell has been used everywhere, from acupuncture clinics to glassblowing studios. One was even installed in the space shuttle, although it was later jettisoned. To this day, that doorbell orbits the Earth. Some people claim to occasionally hear it.
Ironically, the courts did not believe the only true charge against our company: Repeated exposure to the Extremely Loud Doorbell in a business setting can cause a person to go temporarily insane, and transfer money from a company account to a personal account without intending to, or even realizing it.
While on my forced hiatus, I hope to work on a new idea of mine, the cell door that closes softly and quietly. ♦