The Doorbell Knows

Everyone on Birch Lane agreed that the Okafors' house was the loudest on the street, and the happiest. Four children, one grandfather, and a doorbell that no one could hear over the noise. Packages got left. Neighbors left notes. A mail carrier once sang through the mail slot.

So when Chidi, the oldest, installed the Arlo video doorbell on a Saturday morning, the family treated it as a household event. Grandpa Emeka stood on the porch to test it and waved at it for a full minute, at the wrong moment, three times.

On Tuesday afternoon it chimed from the kitchen speaker. Chidi checked his phone: a delivery driver, a large box, a very careful placement beside the planter. The box turned out to be a Vitamix 5200 that his aunt had mailed for a cousin's birthday, a surprise that had been hiding in the mail for a week.

The kids ran to the porch. Grandpa Emeka supervised the unboxing like a ribbon cutting. The blender was installed on the counter by dinner, and the first thing it made was a soup so loud that nobody could hear the doorbell ring again.

It chimed anyway. The phone buzzed. A neighbor stood at the door holding a note that said: Welcome to quiet. We brought cake.

Back in the real world: the Arlo Video Doorbell is a 2K wireless or wired video doorbell, and the Vitamix 5200 is a 64-ounce professional-grade blender. The story is fiction; prices were what I saw on Amazon on Oct 8 and can change.