You ever do something that you know is stupid.....but you do it anyway? I’m not talkin’ about one of those things that’s dangerous but it’s so fun you can’t help it. I’m talkin’ about....well.....accidental attempted suicide. Where was I when Bill Engval was handin’ out signs.......So earlier tonight I get this wild hair....and decide to change all the light bulbs in the whole house.
We had some mix matchin’ going on that just drove me nuts. I’m one of them freaks that can’t stand it when something is uneven. Ya, one of those guys. So, I replace everything. Kitchen, dining room, living room, bedroom, bathroom....closets.....and family room. Now I have a box of mix match bulbs that would make Thomas Edison proud.
No more burned out lights. No more candle lit 20 watt next to the supreme indoor / outdoor 120 watt X-Ray CANNON! I took lights out of my bed room tonight that look like they came out of some underground excavation equipment! Reading the wattage on some of these babies solves one mystery for me. My gas bill is so low because there’s a hundred thousand BDU heat wave coming off of half the fixtures in my house!
I have several small burns on my hands because I....well....I can’t just sit there and wait for them to cool off before I take them out. I tried an oven mitt. Those things are just too beafy. Anywayz.....So now I’m done. I’ve got every light in the house on and I can hear the wheel on my meter spinning outside. Finally I begin shutting everything down. I really had no choice. I could hardly see through the pretty purple spots in my eyes.
I’m so pleased with my work that I sing while I’m flipping switches. "Every light in the house is on......front porch looks like runway lights....." No I don’t like country. "The front porch light is out!" The sound comes from one of the kids I think. I stop and cringe when I hear it. Like Elmer Fud before he fills up with read stuff and blows smoke out of his ears.
How could I have forgotten the front porch? It’s the most important light on the property! It’s my California upbringing. Moments later I have my tool box and I’m on the front porch....in the dark....no flashlight. There are two fixtures on the front porch and both are out. I go right to work. I start with the one closest to the front door.
Keep in mind that we just moved into this place and I am not familiar with this particular style of porch light. Something I should probably do in the day time right? Not me. I must do this now! I finally locate a screw. Just one on top. I press my finger against the screw so that I can tell by the mark on my finger what kind of screw it is. Smart thinkin’ right? "Gawd what a dork," I think to myself.....because I CAN’T SEE MY FINGER......woohoooo!!!! So I take a "shot in the dark" and use my philips.
Bingo we have a match! First try too. I can taste the falling dust through the big stupid grin on my face. I remember thinking..."Hey, this thing is kinda’ pretty." It’s black iron with several panes of glass. I touch the screw driver to the only screw I can find and as soon as I do the big chunk with all the glass falls off and smashes onto the porch! I stand there for a moment poised in this odd position....contemplating the laws of physics. Perhaps the loud crash wasn’t the glass breaking?
I look down to discover that the fixture smashed all the light bulbs I had so carefully placed in a bag and on the porch....right at my feet. No, we’re still not to the stupid part yet. This is just life's way of setting it up. I take the piece and the shards of glass in the house and too my room where I super glue them back together in record time. Luckily only one pane broke and another came loose.
I built a rocket ship out of pickup truck parts and super glue once....that’s a completely different blog. Now I have returned to the porch. I replace the light bulb. I turn the light on. The light works. I move all my junk to the next fixture which is on the top of a black pipe sticking out of the deck..porch...thing...y. There are two panes of glass busted out of it. I look back at the fixture by the front door and quickly calculate the odds that I’m responsible for breaking the glass in this one as well.
Finding no broken glass on the ground and deck around the light leads me to believe that the light fixture......had been broken "previously". I know.....I should work for CSI right? I find a screw and pop the top off. There’s no light bulb. Urrrr!!! No wonder it didn’t work! After all, I’m just a woogy without a squiggle!!! Daaaurr! I take a light bulb out of my pocket...now there’s a safe place.....and attempt to screw it into the socket.
It won’t go in? Raaaagggy? Why? I climb on top of the railing around the deck...porch and look strait down into it. That little voice inside my head says to me...."Hey genius! What do you see?!!"...."Nothing!" I reply. "And why is that?" he says back to me. "Because it’s DARK OUTSIDE!" I say out loud....just realizing that the neighbors car is running. I didn’t look to see if anyone was listening.
Now I’m back in the house looking for the flashlight that I should have taken out there with me in the first place. "Where’s the flashlight?" I say, admiring for a moment all the pretty lights I had put in earlier. "Car!" someone yells. I go get keys, I go to car, I unlock car and retrieve flashlight. I take flash light and point it at my eye and turn it on....because I had to make sure it worked!
Duh! So now I’m one eyed willy or it feels like that anyway after taking a white hot beam of maglite out the back of the head! Half blind I climb once again up onto the railing. I look strait down into the socket to find half a light bulb. Don’t you hate that? What do I do now? I gotta’ get it out right? I jump down, walk over to the front door, reach inside and turn off the switch to the front porch light.
This is where stupid comes in. You can already see it coming can’t you? I think for a second that I should probably find the breaker that channels power to the front porch lights. But I don’t wanna’ do that. That would take a long time.
I put my gloves on and grab a pair of needle nose pliers out of my tool box. I climb the railing once again flashlight in left hand pliers in right. I touch the pliers the the little tiny wires sticking out of what’s left of the base of the bulb. Nothing. "Must be safe," I think to myself. I can hear the other voice in my head laughing quietly.
I reach in and carefully bend one side of the base of the bulb inward. So far so good. I go to do the same thing to the other side when zzzt BAM!!! "If the earth is spinning so fast, then why don’t we all fall off?" Was what went through my head. Completely blinded by the flash that lit up the whole inside of my empty head, I start to fall backwards.
I stick my left foot out to try to land it..."TOOL BOX!" Then with my other left foot....."UUUU....Top of the light fixture??" CRUNCH! Congratulations! You’ve just won a brand new light fixture!!!! Boom!! Onto the deck! Dear Gawd my reeaaar end!!!! I still had the flashlight in my left hand....where were my pliers? Any welders out there?
Yup, my pliers had been arched to the base of the light fixture. Even now pink squiggles are floating around the room everywhere I look. I called Dad to ask him some stuff.....some ’lectric stuff. He was asleep. I decided that the light was like that probably because the exact same thing had happen to someone else. This didn’t make me feel any smarter. I packed it up and went inside thinking that perhaps my life had flashed before my eyes but the blinding arch was so bright that I couldn’t see it.
I’ve decided to buy the house just so that I can rip that fixture right off the deck.
It’s a nice house........
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