I’m up on a ladder installing a security camera at the top of a post on my kitchen porch. I’m not well balanced. I’m leaning out beyond my center of gravity. There is 16ft of tiny low-voltage cable dangling around my legs. And my bifocals are not focusing well enough for me to find the head of the screw with the tip of the driver bit.

This is me moving into the age of wireless technology.

I am a reluctant participant in this conversion. I am just old enough to be confused by change and just stubborn enough to prefer not to have yet another device in my life that runs on an app in the palm of my hand. I’m already worried that Amazon knows way too much about my personal life, anyway.

The security upgrade at my house is not a reaction to anything like an increase in the local crime rate. For the most part, I feel like I still live in Mayberry. I don’t need cameras to feel secure.

I am motivated simply by the discount on my homeowner’s policy for having a system in place.

I love discounts. You already know that I’m a BOGO-holic. I use coupons at the grocery store. If I can save a dime, I’ll buy the generic. And if there are pancakes on the Senior’s Menu at Waffle House, you can bet I’m taking advantage of it.

I’ve had a security system since the house was finished 26 years ago. The keypads, not the operator, would regularly malfunction. Sirens would go off. The phone would ring. I’d forget the “safe word” and the county deputy would show up.

I know they must have hated those calls from the monitoring companies.

I was sitting in the family room one night watching TV. The house was quiet. As far as I knew the alarm system wasn’t even on. Something started beeping.

“Beep beep!”

Every few seconds it would repeat. It took a minute to realize that it was one of the smoke detectors. I went to reset it. That didn’t work. It was hard-wired, so I knew it wasn’t a battery issue. I kept fooling with it until I accidentally set off the alarm.

Alarms are loud, I mean ear-splitting, mind-numbing loud. Still, I managed to punch in the code, and everything went back to normal. No call from the monitoring company. No more insidious beeping. I settled back down on the couch.

Fifteen minutes later, I hear the sound of a diesel truck, and the reflection of red flashing lights are coming through the front windows, bouncing off the interior walls. I open the front door and turn on the floodlights. My buddy John, with two other fellas, are walking across the front yard. They’ve got the bottom half of their turn-out gear on.

“We got a call on a fire. Everything okay?”

I felt stupid. I also felt bad that I got those guys out of their comfy homes late at night on a bogus call. But, had there been a fire, the system got them there.

The old system hasn’t worked for maybe 6 or 8 years now. I’ve been doing without and haven’t worried about it. Mice in the crawl space ate through some of the wires. I kept neglecting to replace the backup battery. One of the keypads quit functioning. The last straw was the siren went off one day when nothing was even on, and I had to cut the wires to make it stop.

One of my retirement plans was to get a new system. It has only taken me two years to get around to doing this. I kept reading that this wireless stuff was easy to install. Anyone can do it. I wondered if they factored in the mind of a guy from 1956 who didn’t know how to set the timer on his coffee pot.

The lady on the phone was nice. Her sweet southern accent made me feel like I actually had a chance of pulling this off. She walked me through all the gizmos and gadgets that went into a system.

Who knew there were so many options? I didn’t figure I needed to monitor my CO2 levels. I wasn’t worried about a sensor under the kitchen sink to check for water leaks. If I can’t open the cabinet door once and a while and take a look, I’m more hopeless than I think I am.

When the box arrived, I was anxious. There were instructions about scanning QR codes. The step-by-step guide was asking me to “sync” the base station with my home Wi-Fi. They wanted me to “pair” my devices with the home base. I had to download the app and create a log-in account. It was tech-overload.

None of this is totally foreign to me, but it’s the kind of stuff that drives me nuts. If you gave me a choice of setting up a piece of tech versus getting a colonoscopy, I think I’d take the scope. The feeling is about the same.

They did offer a professional installation option. I thought about it. But I’m cheap. Besides, I was told that my daughter-in-law on Marion’s side set up one of these by herself and I wasn’t gonna be outdone by a girl. I have my pride.

So, I’m up on a ladder doing my thing. Every time I push a button on one of these devices, lights start blinking and the female voice inside my home base speaks to me. She sounds like Alexa on steroids.

“Door sensor detected.”

“Window sensor on.”

“Signal interference.”

“Device not found.”

It took me most of the day, but I finally got it all done. The first three days of operation are not monitored because they want me to “test” my skills with the system. Get used to how things operate. In plain English, they’re saying, “We know old farts like you are gonna mess up and set off the alarm until you figure it out.”

They are not wrong.

There are several unexpected benefits from having this system. For one thing, I now have a new night light in the kitchen. The base station has a 10 billion KW light on it that makes the entire room a strange shade of blue. I like the house dark, but at least I can see my way to the fridge in the middle of the night.

The other thing is this. I didn’t realize how much fun the cameras would be. I can be a hundred miles away and check to see if it’s raining at the house. When someone pulls up in the driveway, my app dings, and I can see who it is. The Amazon guy can’t hide.

My son pulled up the other night and got out of his truck. I saw him on the camera. My app has a push-to-talk feature, which I decided to try.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

I thought he was gonna fall off the porch.

So, I’m officially protected. Fully secure. And I feel somewhat savvy.

But remember, if you come to visit me…

I can see you.