I woke before the alarm, thinking I was ready to deal with whatever the cell phone did. Since not being able to stop the alarm was highly unusual, I didn’t change anything. Surely it would not repeat the 10-minute ringing from the day before. Nothing prepared me for what happened. Here was the peaceful scene of Echo Blue Dot sitting near the deck door across from my bed.

I had my phone in my hand. When the alarm sounded, I said, “Alexa, stop.” Nothing happened! NOTHING! The alarm kept ringing. Holding the phone to my ear, I found it was not making a sound. The noise came from across the room.

I said to myself, “I’ll take care of you Alexa. I’ll turn you off!”

In low light, I couldn’t see the buttons and jabbed at each one on the device. The ringing kept on and on. I pulled the plug. The alarm continued!! I held the blue globe to my ear, convinced it was somehow continuing without power. How could it? I didn’t think it had any batteries. Wait! The sound wasn’t louder close to my ear! Alexa was truly off.

Here is a closer shot. Do you see my old phone upside down on the left?

It was the OLD PHONE that was ringing, not the Echo and not the new phone in my hand! I figured out what had happened. On Saturday I charged it to play games with it and assumed it would be unresponsive while face down. Nothing else would have worked, but I now realized the alarm would work. However, the alarm was not set for Sunday, so it dutifully went off on Monday. It quit ringing after 10 minutes, as programmed. Whew! I was so happy to know how this happened two days in a row. Without hearing aids in my ears, I couldn’t tell exactly where the sound was coming from and assumed it was the new phone. The old phone is now truly turned off and had better not haunt me any more.