And Now, For Number Two On My List…

First thing Monday morning I wrote down my 2do2da list on a 3X5 card so I could scratch out each item as I accomplished it.

Topping my list of 23 items, number one was to find a faulty electric plug in my outside office shed so I could get the lamps working again so I could see enough to get items eight through 15 done.

You following this so far?

My outside office shed has two wall sockets. Plugged into the one on the north wall is a long surge protector/power strip; in that are plugged four desk lamps, a computer, a printer and a radio.

In front of that north wall socket over months of time, I have build a brick and board bookcase. In front of that book case I stored a floor-to-ceiling stack of file boxes loaded with Florida history materials. On top of those boxes are mailing tubes containing history posters, box lids filled with coffee mugs featuring some Jacksonville logo, and boxes filled with maybe a hundred tee-shirts featuring Jacksonville events from years past.

On top of those are board games, ash trays, pipe racks, a statue of a Greek goddess, a pile of file folders I haven’t gotten around to filing, and a long board with nails hammered in a complex pattern which I used in teaching adult Bible lessons.

Can you picture the scene?

Hold it in mind because you can’t actually see it because my lights went out a couple of months ago. I used a flash light when I need to find a book or file out there.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that the books are double-shelved.

So to find why the lights went out and get them working again, I needed to test every socket in every extension cord and several surge protectors which link to the first one.

To test the sockets I used a small radio.

To make sure that worked, I unplugged the coffee pot in the kitchen and plugged the radio into the wall socket.

I hear music.

Good.

I up plug it.

I still hear music.

The radio is one with a battery back up so that it keeps playing even when unplugged. I remove the battery and check it again. Again I hear music.

Crawling around under the desk and behind stacks of books and the fan and the child-sized coffin (don't ask) I plug the radio into every socket I can reach.

No music.

That means that I must trace all the wires back to the north wall socket — the one behind all that stuff.

I remove the coffin (which is full of toys — again, don’t ask) and the ammunition box, and the Dave Barry collection, and the chess set, and the andirons, and the brass spittoon, and the plastic skeleton under the glass dome, and … I still can’t see the wall socket.

I clear a space on the desk (got to repair that clock someday) for the books and begin disassembling the brick and board bookshelves over the top of the other stuff.

Won’t work.

I remove the cinder block with the attached seamstress’s hem marker, and the fish skull (Don’t ask… well, if you must, it’s another adult Bible lesson teaching gimmick ). I remove the boxes of tee shirts, the coffee mugs, the board games, the first two layers of bookshelves...

I still can’t see that plug.

Good thing I’m not a materialist.

Exhausted I take a break and sit outside smoking a favorite pipe I’d lost months ago but found behind some stuff this morning.

I watch Matilda the duck. I’ve been running the lawn water sprinklers because we haven’t had a drop of rain in over a month

At first the duck is suspicious of this new thing (incidentally, she’s still convinced that I’m really Colonel Sanders in disguise) but she soon claims the sprinkler as her own. When a dove or bluejay or cardinal or cowbird tries to drink from the spray of water, Matilda spreads her wings and charges squawking to chase the other bird away.

As I sit there panting from all my exertions, a light comes on above my head…

A mental light, you understand.

An idea.

A bright idea.

A very bright idea.

A brilliant idea in fact!

I went back in the office, unplugged the initial surge protector/power strip, ran a heavy-duty extension cord from the SOUTH wall plug…

And behold, there was light and music and computer cursor flashing and a cooling breeze from the fan.

That cooling breeze felt very nice as I moved all that stuff back to where it was in the first place.

Like most of my labor on this earth, it all proved unnecessary.

But, if you hear of a job opening for an electrical engineer, I am available.