Light Switch of Mystery!
December 04, 2006
So, it is in my experience that every house has one. That light switch that apparently doesn’t control anything. Upon discovery of said light switch the obvious joke follows: as you flick the trigger up and down, surely the neighbors are wondering why their lamp has suddenly become possessed.
Our last apartment had one. It was in the water closet. And I still don’t know what it was for. When we moved into our current home, a terrace home only a couple of years old, I was surprised to find another one. This one in the living room. With all of the electrical outlets in the room containing at least one appliance, I tested the switch. Nothing happened.
Who wires these things? It’s a new house with a light switch to no where! Well, my interest in the mystery flickered and died like so many old 60 watt light bulbs, and eventually the dim light switch faded from memory. Except for every time I looked at the wall. And there it was. Mocking me.
We’ve been living at this address with this dead light switch for three years. I’ve long since ignored the thing. One day I’m digging out Christmas decorations, and I thought I found another one! High up on the wall in the furnace room. “We can’t possible have two mystery light switches in one house, can we?” I ask the wife. She doesn’t care, so I flick it, and the furnace shuts off. It’s wise to keep these things out of reach of children.
So the tree is up, decorated, and plugged in. My 20 year old toy train hums along underneath, carrying a load of coal to some Twilight Zone destination that it will never reach. The little snow man is plugged in, and he glows fiber-optically. The last of the decorations is a tiny snow covered house, which is also to be plugged into the wall, and so Liz carries it over to the end of the couch, and plugs it into the top receptacle there, since the bottom is occupied by the lamp on the end table. “The top plug doesn’t work,” she explains, when the house failed to light up.
I flicked the switch. The house was aglow.
It was Christmas miracle.
Posted lovingly by Ryan 0 Comments 0 Trackbacks Permalink
