I had an electrical problem nearly turn into a life-or-death police encounter. At least it felt that way for a moment. I lived in San Jose, California, in a ne

I had an electrical problem nearly turn into a life-or-death police encounter. At least it felt that way for a moment. I lived in San Jose, California, in a neighborhood with underground utilities. One afternoon two police officers banged loud on the door and yelled "San Jose Police! Open up!" My wife opened the door while I walked down the stairs with my Motorola StarTAC in my hand and its antenna extended. I thought "OMG, what if this looks like a gun?" The officers said that 911 had been dialed from our address, and there was no one on the line and no one answered when the dispatcher called back, so they had to come out to investigate. We all took a deep breath and I told the officers "I think I know what happened. Come on in and I can show you." We went to the wall-mount phone in the kitchen. (Remember those?) I pressed the speaker button and explained. "Do you hear all those clicks? Our underground phone line got flooded from the bad storm we just had, and the line has been shorting out off and on all day. Remember the old fashioned rotary dial phones? Those worked by making and breaking the circuit just like this. I'll bet there were nine clicks in a row, then one click, then one more click. So these short circuits dialed 911. We're all fine here other than the bad phone service. Sorry you had to come out to investigate." After that the officers were pretty chill about it. I just wished I had some donuts to offer them to thank them for their time!