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Improbably Erratic Adventures of the Light Bulb Thief
The tiny 60-year-old flashlight bulb has never burned out. It still powers the Spitz Junior planetarium that splatters stars and constellations across my bedroom ceiling and walls, thus allowing me to sleep under a nighttime sky sans mosquitoes and unpredictable temperatures.
My nights are star-filled and constant, even though life itself is erratic.
One of the mysteries of day to day existence is, why do some bulbs burn interminably, while others flash and fail?
This meandering path to the need for artificial illumination causes millions of us to become light bulb thieves.
I’m cozying up with a late-night book abed, preparing to read myself aslumber. One flick of the bedside lamp switch sidetracks the evening. The bulb stops working. There are choices to be made. I can arise from my comfy pillows, don shoes and clothing, and wend my way downstairs to Liz’s studio, where reside light bulbs galore. I can pore through dozens of multi-sized multi-watted Edison rejects for just the right bulb—and risk not finding anything at all, thus disrupting my submersion into the nighttime literary daze—or I can quickly barefoot it to the next room and sneak a bulb from another lamp. Wonder which option I will choose?
Payback. There is always payback. Two nights later, I’m sitting down to read the paper. I reach to turn on the chairside switch, and nothing happens. This is, of course, because there is no light bulb in the lamp. It’s in the bedroom.
Decisions, decisions.
After several weeks of rotating and snitching light bulbs, there comes a day of reckoning. I really will have to make a cranky effort to bring fresh light bulbs into my life, else adjust to perpetual darkness.
Now, to gird my loins and get on with it
© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.