A productive afternoon at my desk turned to 30 minutes of pure horror today. I received a call from the good folks at LifeLine, which provides my just-turned-eighty mother with a necklace she can press in the event of a medical emergency. I have yet to discover if pressing this device emits a sound, but I plan to find out.

But I digress. It would appear that both my phone and my sister’s phone rang at about the same time, alerting us that our Mother had pressed her LifeLine button, but a call to her home phone was fruitless. Did I mention that the Fire Department entered the apartment, to discover it EMPTY?

Unaware that this contraption only works within 100 feet of her living room, I called the police so they could put out a BOLO on her Neon – bright red crocheted flag on the antenna and all . We Googled numbers and began making calls, our voices shaking and the tears welling up.

A call to my Aunt yielded paydirt: on Mondays, she goes to the Senior Center to play Scrabble. And yes, she had the number.

The gentleman at the Senior Center listened to my story and made an announcement to the room, calling her by name. I could hear her voice faintly in the background, “I’m over here!” I envisioned her placing a “Q” above an “I” to form “qi” for a triple-word score.

As far as we can figure, she must have hit the dang button getting into her car, which is parked right outside her apartment. It sent a crystal clear signal to the transponder, setting off a series of unfortunate events.

Normally at night, I play Words with Friends to relax. Not tonight.