The Dimmer from Hell

ER FROM HELL

  By Jos. Henry

  ISBN 978-0-9947867-2-2

  Copyright 2015 Jos. Henry

  All rights reserved

  Thank you for downloading this short story. It remains the property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed the story please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favourite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

  This book is a work of fiction. Incidents, names, characters and places are products of the author's imagination and/or used fictitiously. Resemblance to actual locales or events or persons living or dead is coincidental.

  Some days you just can't do wrong: You do the lawn and it starts to rain once you've put the mower away; almost late for an appointment you cruise for a spot to park and a minivan pulls away from the curb in front of where you have to go.

  This was not the kind of day in store for Albert.

  Mabel went to the laundry room to load the washing machine. The room is uncomfortably dim on most days even if the top half of the outside door is a window: The property is thick with large old trees that block much of the light to just about every part of the house.

  The ceiling light wouldn't come on.

  'ALBERT?'

  She summoned Albert from the library where he was making plans for next weekend's annual fishing trip. Mabel's tone inferred urgency: He stopped everything and went to her.

  'The bulbs in the fixture are burned; I pushed the dimmer and turned it both ways and nothing happened.'

  She said no more and went away; no need to say more: By long established "to-do" convention new bulbs would be in place by the time she came back to put the wash in the drier.

  Albert thought it unusual that two bulbs would burn at the same time; maybe one burned first and went unnoticed until the other burned. He pushed and rotated the dimmer left and right a few times; nope! No light.

  He fetched his two-step stool and removed the light diffuser and bulbs from the fixture. He examined the filaments through the bulbs' clear glass. They were intact and he could see no discolouration. He screwed them back in.

  He shouted to Mabel,

  'WELL, IT LOOKS LIKE THE DIMMER FINALLY GAVE OUT.'

  She came over to see how the job progressed.

  'It was old when I installed it almost ten years ago. It would pick today to give-up. I have a bunch of new decorative dimmers I bought when we moved-in but haven't installed yet.'

  'All in good time' she said, rolled her eyes and walked away again.

  'I'll go get one' he said.

  Albert ignored the comment; one learns, however slowly.

  He kept power to the dimmer box because you never know what else is on the same circuit. He removed the defective dimmer, capped both wires in the junction box with "twist" connectors to avoid accidental jolts and sparks and prepared to install a new one.

  He searched to find the configuration he needed in the series of sketches printed on the handy one-sheet-fits-all instructions that came with the new dimmer. He found how to connect four-way and three-way switches and dimmers and a single-pole plain switch as well as a few other switches in various circuit configurations. Not one of the sketches on the over busy and cluttered sheet fit his needs or at least, he didn't see one.

  'I don't need the instructions anyway. I'll just find the two dimmer wires I need and leave the other two insulated and loose in the box.' So far, so good.

  He connected the new dimmer the same way he had the first one, years ago: He twisted the return wire together with the dimmer return wire; then un-capped the live second wire and just touched it to the corresponding dimmer wire. No need to make a solid connection until he knew the dimmer worked. It didn't.

  Surprised, he stared into space a few moments and tried to think of a quick way to find the problem but none came to mind or rather, too many came to mind. Experience led Albert to think there might be more to this trivial wiring job than seemed at first. The whole circuit might have to be checked from the panel downstairs up through the floor and behind the wall up to the junction box then up behind the wall again and above the ceiling to the fixture.

  Plans for the fishing trip would have to wait a while.

  Down hearted and frustrated he said,

  'Sun of a gun (a euphemism); I don't want to do all that.'

  Albert had a few more things he thought he should try before he undertook difficult measures. He fetched the hobby multi-meter he bought a while ago. He knew it wasn’t to professional standard but for home use it was ok even if he couldn't quite read the tiny markings on its mode dial.

  He touched the meter probes to the junction box wires—alligator clips were extra he supposed—and got no smoke or sparks but no reading either. In meter-speak this meant "I don't want to upset you Mr. Albert, but you have me in the wrong mode to measure AC voltage". Albert couldn't be bothered with what a cheap meter with microscopic markings and dark display might have to say; he had no time and wasn't interested.

  'No power in the junction box! The breaker must be 'off' or defective' he said to himself.

  The simple job might morph into a monster. Defective breakers are so rare that you could almost say they never are and when a breaker trips, it’s because a serious and maintained overload or an important current surge occurred. He didn’t want to deal with a surge or overload: You sometimes can't be sure you found the problem.

  'Lord, have mercy…, he muttered, if it comes to that I might as well go out and buy candles.'

  Dejected, he went down to the basement and found the breaker; it seemed to be 'on' but he toggled it to make sure.

  He began to think there might be a problem with the fixture but found it hard to believe.

  'Not much can go wrong with that sort of device other than a loose connection if it's not properly installed.'

  He very much wanted to avoid the contortion-gymnastics necessary to take it down though it would be much easier than to check the circuit.

  'You have to be an octopus to balance on a stool and take down a ceiling fixture; I'll check for voltage one last time.'

  He went back upstairs and used the meter to check again if the junction box had voltage; it didn’t.

  Just then Mabel peeked in,

  'Are you almost done? I need to finish the laundry. I don't remember you taking so long to install the first dimmer' she said as she noticed a new one hanging from the junction box by a single wire.

  'It shouldn't be long now' he fibbed. The pressure mounted.

  Mabel went away dubious of the time he needed for a simple job. Her confidence was waning; so was his.

  With the box dead he suspected the breaker again. He went back downstairs and saw that it was still 'on' as it should be. He was happy to see it 'on' even if it meant he hadn't found the problem yet; at least he wouldn't have to find the cause of an overload or surge.

  Stumped for the moment he decided to do something mindless to give himself time to think and refocus. Since the breaker panel was already open he started to tighten all the white return wires. Electricians are impressed when you tell them you did that; they start to think well of you. They even smile, wave and say "hi" when they see you at the village coffee shop: Most of them are volunteer firemen and tight white wires help reduce the risk of fire which all too often happens when they're in bed.

  The white wires nicely tightened he was back to taking down the fixture to make sure it hadn't failed in some way. He thought it best to put the breaker 'off' because of the tight finger space around the fixture; a 120 volt shock is more annoyance than danger but under the right circumstances it can trigger a temper flare-up.

  He
went back upstairs reluctantly to take down the fixture; he just knew he'd find nothing wrong with it. Hoping to avoid the pointless exercise he checked the junction box one last time to see if he could get a reading on the meter. He couldn't.

  'How the heck can that be? The breaker is 'on'' he said to himself.

  No it wasn't; not anymore, remember? And anyway, the meter was still in the wrong mode to read AC.

  That the meter displayed no reading bothered him, but those of us who've faced the same sort of frustration know that by now Albert had done and undone enough things and gone up and down stairs and step-ladders enough times to forget just where he stood and how he left everything.

  In a last ditch effort to make sense of the problem he removed the stove-hood bulb and substituted one of the laundry room bulbs: As expected it was good; it was not burned nor was the second bulb. But mere confirmation that the bulbs were good still left him well short of the accomplishments he felt were expected of him; his pride was at stake.

  He went back to the laundry room and tried the original bulbs again. You guessed it: The bulbs didn't light; the stove-hood bulb too worked only in the hood.

  'This is ridiculous; it's absurd, it's impossible. I quit' and he looked for something inexpensive to smash. His actual words had more vigour and rhetorical embellishment.

  He decided not to dismantle the fixture and reinstalled the light diffuser. Instead, he connected the new dimmer the way he felt it should be but let it hang from the junction box by its wires and quit for the day. Tomorrow he could tackle the problem again with a clear head and very likely resolve the puzzle quickly. If he couldn't, they might sell the house and find another with more reliable power in the laundry room.

  He sat down in the kitchen and hoped Mabel wouldn't press for an up-date; he had nothing to tell her. Mabel said nothing; her silence at such times often meant she tried to avoid censorious comments. She could still disturb the peace later if she needed.

  She thought she might as well start dinner. She pulled open the refrigerator door and the dimmer problem vanished from her mind:

  'Oh no! Now the refrigerator doesn’t work either; the light is out.'

  Albert's blood pressure rose; he had resigned himself to continue the job the next morning but he was in no mood to resume the torture so soon. After the initial shock of the refrigerator warming-up it finally flashed in his mind that he had left the breaker 'off' on purpose to work on the fixture: Maybe the same breaker powered the refrigerator too.

  He rushed downstairs, put the breaker 'on', rushed back up and prayed the darn refrigerator worked. It did.

  The pressure started to subside. He said to Mabel,

  'If the refrigerator works that stupid dimmer should work too.' It did.

  Albert rejoiced as if he'd just discovered America.

  Mabel couldn't quite grasp why Albert was so jubilant but just in case he'd achieved a technical break-through of some notable import she said,

  'Well done, dear.'

  He pushed the dimmer into its junction box, put the trim plate on and he was done. Tomorrow he could get back to the more important fishing stuff.

  As he went over the job in his mind Albert thought of several errors he might have made though he didn't dwell on the mystery; he would think things over at some other time … maybe. Just now he was too relieved to be free of the dimmer from hell to engage in forensic analysis.

  Anyway, with the in-laws there for dinner the next day he felt certain he would be forced to relive the entire episode in agonising detail. He would doubtless have to endure his jackass brother in law's "eeh-haw" laugh in accompaniment to "shouldadone" lyrics all evening.

  His brother in law would be on the fishing trip too.