The frail told me that the light in the bedroom had burned out. She had already changed the bulb. The new one didn't shed any more light than an old shoe either. I grabbed the old bulb. It seemed fine to me. I hit the switch. The light pulsed like a warp nacelle, but just one time with each flip of the switch; it wouldn't stay lit. I had heard this story before. I knew the cure. I also knew that it would be the weekend before I could light up my doll's life with 120 volts and a 60 watt bulb. She knew the score. She would live with it until I was good and ready to make Edison's pet dance to my tune.
(Picture from This Man Is Dangerous--which I also watched on Saturday. It's a great movie--French Noir featuring Eddie Constantine as Lemmy Caution. I'll do a write up on it...maybe Thursday)
It was a Saturday. The sun stared through a cloudy sky like a one-eyed man behind a smoking pipe. There was a foul smell in the air. It hit my nostrils like the stench of that frozen hamburger I had left in a drawer to thaw before Christmas vacation at college...and remembered two weeks later when the vacation was over. It was the odor of a task left undone. I had hidden the meat so my roommates wouldn't eat it before I got back from a late class--that part of the plan was entirely successful; nobody ate the hamburger; it was a long while before any of us wanted to eat hamburger again.
I checked my wallet for lettuce. I had enough for a small salad. I started the brown beast and drove it to the local mercantile. It was inside that I saw him. He was a big man, a Mack truck in a vest. I walked past without a word. I knew that I was in the right aisle.
He wasn't having it. "What do you need?" he said in a tone that he must have thought sounded helpful.
I wasn't sure that I liked his attitude. Maybe he was implying that I wasn't competent to find the right item. I wondered just who he thought he was, questioning my skills. I thought about politely bending his nose with a hard right cross to cure him from sticking it into my business. A couple things kept me from acting on that thought. First, I wasn't sure I could reach his nose without a stepladder. Second, I knew who he thought he was; he worked there; he had helped me at least one other time.
"I need a light switch," I said with an air of casual electrical nonchalance.
"There, on your left," he said, pointing.
I'm pretty sure he said, "There," and not "they're." Either way, I saw the switches.
"These are white, and those are off-white," he pointed to another basket. "What color did you need?" Apparently, the entire chromatic panoply of light switches consisted only of white, and off-white.
Naturally, I had no idea what color I wanted. I didn't care. I knew I needed a 120 volt 15 amp switch. I looked at the picture on my phone that I had taken of the switch.
"That's off-white," he said, looking at the picture.
I was impressed with the big man's grasp of the color palette, as well as his rapid application of the knowledge to the facts at hand. I had decided on white...ish. "I better get two," I said. I explained that this was not the first time that I had had to do this. Besides, there were two switches in the box. I figured that I might as well replace them both.
Once again, there were two open checkouts. At one, a woman with 47 plastic storage boxes was fumbling through a purse. At the other, there was a guy I knew. I asked him if this was the quicker line. He said that it wasn't, but this was the only checkout that had the razor blades that he needed. I moved over behind the dame with the storage boxes. I figured those containers were meant either for Christmas decorations...or she had bad luck keeping pets. Probably the former.
When I left the store, my acquaintance was still waiting in the other line.
I had the element of surprise on my side for this caper. I cut the power and moved in under cover of darkness...or at least pretty poor natural light. In a matter of seconds I had cracked the combination on the cover; it was flat head, not phillips. Inside, things got a little tricky...I had to switch to the phillips head. I replaced the contents with the new stuff and replaced the cover. No one would even know that the box had been breached.
When I restarted the juice, those electrons danced to give off a soft white light that would make angels blush.
No comments:
Post a Comment