Slightly Cursed

The other day, I got tired of looking at the bare sockets on the walls in our new family room. The family room is a project started by my husband. He’d been promising me for a month that he’d put the wall plates on “after he finished checking a few things out.” Yeah, right.

I was tired of waiting around and decided to put the wall plates on myself. Now, most of you are probably thinking, “Big deal. A four year old could install a wall plate.” But I have to take extra precautions whenever I do anything around the house that involves electricity. This is because I’m married to an electrical engineer.

Unlike most men, my husband cannot stop himself from rewiring everything around him. It’s an obsession rivaled only by his current love for servo motors. In any case, sometimes he chooses to do non-standard things just because he can. When he’s working on electrical wiring, he never says normal things like, “Be sure and turn off the breaker before you touch anything.” No, he says vaguely disturbing things like, “You might not want to touch that,” while waving his hand indeterminately, or asks “do I have any rubber soled shoes?”

I picked up the first plate and grabbed the screws. Adjusting the plate and setting the screw into position, I made short work of the first three screws. The fourth screw gave me a bit of trouble, and I wiggled the screw to try and seat it better.

I electrocuted myself. Mild as it was, it was every bit as unpleasant as it had been when I’d stuck that hairpin in the light socket at the age of four.

The screw was all the way in. I wasn’t touching it again. I still had two wall plates to go. Being the prudent person I am, I immediately thought to myself, “Hey, maybe this is a bad idea. Leave it for the husband to do Saturday.”

I pondered my inner wisdom, figuratively nodding my agreement. Yes, I was wise. I gathered my tools. I stopped and took one final look at the sockets bulging out the front of their little blue box. I looked at the sockets. The creepy, plastic eyes of my walls stared at me in a vacantly challenging way.

Then, it happened: something activated my Stubborn Gene. You see, I’m not a quitter. I never have been. I come from a long line of non-quitting stubborn people.

So why was I giving up and passing the job off on my husband when I was perfectly capable of doing it myself?

“This is ridiculous,” I muttered. “Who couldn’t put a screw through a predrilled hole?” Heck, I took electronics shop in high school. I could read color-coded resistors and work a drill press. Out came my tools; I was determined. Sitting down in front of the socket, I leaned forward to inspect the wires. Having recently zapped myself, I wasn’t keen on a repeat.

I poked around in the hole behind the sockets. There was a wad of black electrical tape wrapped around a bunch of wires. Off to the side was a thick, copper wire, and a small screw hole sat just behind the edge of the black tape. Perfect! The top screw zipped effortlessly into place. I smiled. Halfway there! I aligned the bottom screw but the mass of taped wires was in the way.

Like the genius I sometimes become when operating solely on Stubborn Gene Power, I decided to use the screw to push the taped mess of wires just a hair so the screw would go into the hole. I was afraid to touch the wires due to my earlier zappage. Bending over to get a better view, my face only a couple of inches from the action, I pushed the screw in gently, pushing the side of the tape. The whole socket moved. I pushed again and grabbed the metal screw-mount tab on the top of the socket.

There was a brief noise that sounded like a cross between the snap of thick plastic breaking and a small nuclear warhead. This was accompanied by a whoosh! of heat and searing flash of light. For about five minutes, I laid on the floor trying to assess the damage without actually opening my eyes. My eyeballs felt gritty and sore, even back in the sockets, like they did after I’d had LASIK. But they hadn’t melted away!

The scratchy feeling lasted five or six days, and I was light sensitive for almost two weeks. My husband mumbled something about temporarily using the circuit to run the dryer while he fixed the short in the wall.

I’m not allowed to play electricity anymore. But I’ve got my eye on some plumbing work that needs to be done. It’s just some water and pipes.

What could possibly go wrong?

written by vic