December 29, 2019 – Mystery of the overhead light

         We are both getting up in age, so we use more lights, more often and then at night have to go around and turn them off in our wake to bed.

         I’d already gone to bed, I was tired, too much raking of wet fallen leaves the day before.  The next morning is a routine, just as everyone has a routine.

         I pad out to the kitchen and take care of Jasmine the cat and she settles down to her fresh food and fresh water and chirps.  I now make coffee by the cup with a K-cup machine.  I had misgivings about it at first. I still think it does cost twice as much for a cup of coffee.  However, you compare that with the convenience of only one cup at time and not having to empty and wash and polish, yes, polish the inside of the glass coffee pot when you clean it, so time equates money and saved time means you pay for it some way or another.

         Coffee in hand, I take it to my computer desk where I take care of my husband’s A.M. and P.M. pills.  I go to the wall switch, and flip and “nothing!”

         My mind flashed back to my childhood remembering that my Daddy built the house I was raised in as a child. That house had switches at both ends of the hall so that when we went to bed, we would turn the corner from the living room, switch off the living room and turn on the hall light to the bedrooms, and then at the end of the hall, turn off the hall light and turn on the bath or bedroom lights.  He planned it that way and I thought all houses had this leave one room, turn off that light and turn on the light to the next room – but in my many moves and many houses I have lived in – that is not how it is in the real world out there.

         I sip my coffee to get the cobwebs out of my brain.  The computer light is on, the computer printer light is on.  That proves I have electricity in this room – that is not the problem.  I go to the front door and check the switches there – well knowing they do not control the overhead light – but, I open the front door and check that the outside light comes on and then turn on the one outlet that is controlled by the switch near the door and flip that and the entry way lamp comes on.  So, it is not a case that the rest of the electricity on all sides of the room is random or not working.

         Another sip of coffee and I check the second switch beside the center light switch and the fan blades start to turn.  Well, it is on the same double switch, one for the fan and one for the light – what is going on?

         I move the morning pill project to the kitchen counter where there is light so I don’t miss the tiny pills.

         Later, almost done with my first cup of coffee of the day, I am still pondering, perplexed, and walk out to unlit computer room and switch both switches up.  The fan comes on, and the three light globes do not.  No. it wasn’t brain fog – still no light.

         You are supposed to change the fan direction a few times a year between heating and air conditioning – I will admit I never do and I looked at the fan and the three ridged globes.  I noticed, we have two chains – a center chain and a side chain.  The side chain is for the fan, I assumed, and the center chain is-   

         I pulled it and LIGHTS.  I have never used the center pull chain as long as I have owned this house. When we had these fans/lights installed, the electrician said – it is all on the light switch here and he showed me.

         Funny what my husband’s geriatric mind did on the way to bed last night. He turned out lights the old-fashioned way.  My husband’s mind must have wandered back to his child hood days when he lived with his grandparents in that ancient house in New Hampshire with the high-up-on-the-wall water closets and the center-room light pull chains.

         The mystery of the center ceiling light in the computer room solved – by an old fashioned pull chain.