I think every once in a while a man has to cheat death in
order to feel truly alive. Either that, or because of our male DNA, we just
keep doing really stupid things, surviving them somehow, then telling ourselves
that every once in a while a man has to cheat death in order to feel truly
alive.
Since I gave up professional snowmobile motocross and
extreme cage fighting, I tend to mainly cheat death these days with home
repair. It’s a win-win, really, because not only do I get to feel truly alive,
but occasionally I accidentally fix something. This last time was not one of
those times.
Our air conditioner quit working last week. That was a very
unfortunate situation, since our house is currently sitting on the surface of
the sun. It was 104 degrees the day it died. That is not cool. Fortunately - for
her anyway - my wife was leaving with the kids the next day for a week-long
excursion without me. That meant I would be left to sweat profusely by myself
until the air conditioner guy could come out. “No problem,” I thought, as I
dialed up the repair man, “I can make it a day or two.”
“Sorry, sir, but we’re scheduled out past a week at this
point. We can be there next Wednesday.”
“Uhh… Can you repeat that? I had sweat inside my ear and I
thought I just heard you say next Wednesday.”
It turns out that air conditioner problems are a pretty
common occurrence here on the sun, and I had heard him correctly. I reluctantly
scheduled my convenient four-hour window of time, and hung up the phone. As I
wiped my face sweat from the phone’s front screen, I vowed to try and fix it
myself in the meantime. I was mildly concerned that I might accidentally
dehydrate until I remembered that beer is full of water. No problem there, but
I really just wanted to be cool, and I could always cancel the appointment.
Besides, I hadn’t cheated death in a while.
Through some very high-level troubleshooting at the circuit
breaker panel on the side of my house, I had noticed that the breaker was
tripping when the air conditioner tried to come on. I also noticed that the
breaker would trip even when I had the A/C turned off. I obviously had a bad
circuit breaker! I can fix that! I think…
I know what I’m doing with electricity in the same way that
a teenager knows how to drive a car. I am familiar with the main concept, but I
am severely lacking in skill and comprehension on some of the finer points.
What I do know is that electricity is amazing. Take a
refrigerator for example. Electricity runs the compressor that makes the
refrigerator cold, in turn, making your beer cold. Electricity also runs the
little light bulb inside the refrigerator, making it possible to find the cold
beer, even in the dark. Light bulbs are hot. Electricity is responsible for
both cold and hot in the same machine, all resulting in the ability to find and
drink a cold beer, any time of the day or night. Simply amazing!
I also know a little about the units involved in describing electrical
circuits. Many people are confused by the relationship between Amps and Volts,
and many others simply don’t know what they are at all. It’s really quite
simple, actually.
Amps are the measurement of electricity’s ability to kill
you, in units of consecutive missed heartbeats. Getting shocked by a 3-amp
circuit will probably be survivable, but a 30-amp circuit will do you in. You simply
cannot survive missing thirty consecutive heartbeats.
Voltage is the measure of how far the electricity will throw
you while the amps are killing you. Volts are measured in inches per death. For
instance, a 480-volt circuit will throw you 480 inches, or 40 feet, while the
amps are turning you into a baked potato.
The circuit for my A/C unit has a 40-amp breaker. Forty
consecutive heartbeats are too many to miss. I think it is also 220 volts,
which means if I screwed up, my body would be found a little over eighteen feet
away from the panel. That would put me squarely in the middle of my neighbor’s
driveway.
Speaking of my neighbor, I was a little conflicted there. My
family had left, so I was all alone. I wanted someone to know that I was about
to attempt to cheat death, on the off chance that I had only missed ten or so
heartbeats and was only blown five or six feet from the panel and clinging to
life. On the other hand, our neighbor is old and I didn’t want to scare her. I
decided someone was bound to drive by and see me smoking on the driveway, so I
didn’t bother her.
I removed my wedding ring. I’m not a hundred percent sure
why this is necessary, but I just know that professional electricians don’t wear
them. I think it’s so when your wife is collecting your personal belongings
after you die, she doesn't have to try and pull it off your charred ring finger.
I then watched a few YouTube videos on how to change a
breaker, and instantly became an expert. I got my screwdriver and approached
the electrical panel, mostly almost confident. I carefully unscrewed the panel
cover and carefully removed it, very carefully. I was sweaty.
There, behind the circuit breakers, I could now see the “bus
bar,” which is a Latin for “metal strip of death.” It is a large copper plate
that all the circuit breakers clip onto, and it is brimming with
kill-you-instantly electricity. I was fairly sure that I could disable the bus
bar by switching the large main circuit breaker off. I could see another copper
plate coming from under another protective cover that looked like it was
going to the main breaker, but I wanted to be sure.
I carefully unscrewed the other cover and carefully removed
it, very carefully. There behind the panel, I was face-to-face with all of the
electricity for the entire neighborhood, coming in from the street on two wires
as thick as Costco polish sausages. This was not on any of the videos.
I should not have removed this cover.
Crap.
Sure enough, they were attached to the plate running to the
main breaker, so I was almost confident that shutting the main breaker off
would kill the bus bar, but I knew for a fact there was no way to shut off the
power to the two giant cables of doom that I had just uncovered.
I was now sweating and moving like the guy diffusing the
bomb in the action film. If I accidentally touched the metal cover or my
screwdriver to either of these humongous wires, I would receive enough Amps and
Volts to miss a month’s worth of heartbeats and weld my body to the stop sign
at the end of the street. Despite the gallons of sweat and nervous hand
tremors, I managed to replace the cover and screw it down without incident.
Crisis averted. Death cheated, yet again.
I switched off the main, removed the old 40-amp breaker, and
took it to Lowe’s to find a new one. They had an exact match, and new one in
hand, I drove back to my house confident and even a little proud. Today, I know
everything there is to know about electricity. Today I am an electrical
super-genius. Today I am Tony Stark from Iron
Man.
I slapped that new breaker in, buttoned up the panel cover,
and flipped the main back on. Confidently, I flipped the new 40-amp breaker on…
only to have it trip right back off.
Hmm… Electrical super-genius Tony Stark did not seem to fix
anything here. In fact, all I seemed to have accomplished was spending eleven
dollars on a breaker I didn’t need and getting to reset all the clocks inside an
85-degree house. Not awesome.
After spending the majority of the rest of the week in my
car with the A/C running, I’m now in the middle of my convenient four-hour
window, waiting for the real electrician to arrive and actually fix something.
I don’t think I’ll tell him this story.
Oh, well. At least I cheated death. I feel truly alive!
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen
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