I hate light bulbs. I hate them to the point that I am about to remove every lamp in my house and replace them with kerosene torches staked to the walls. Like a Medieval castle. That way I won’t have to deal with light bulbs anymore. That way I won’t have to make so many futile trips to the hardware store in search of the correct size, shape or “color tone.” I mean, you would think I’m installing nuclear reactors by the complexity of the task. All the research, planning and agonizing over it and then still …
Meltdown. I got the wrong bulb base again!
I never get it right.
This all came to a head as I installed a remote control in my ceiling fans. After more than 20 years of banging my head on those chain pullies with the little wood balls dangling like kitty toys, I decided to wire in remotes and join advanced modern society. Also, because when your house already has 3,000 remote controls – most lost deep beneath sofa cushions – why not add a few more?
And with the fans and lights on remotes, I can walk around the house clicking wildly as I try to figure out which one controls the light I need. Won’t that be fun?
Seemed simple enough – the remote was, the wiring was – until I noticed one of the three bulbs in a dining room fan was dimmer than the others. Worse still, ALL of them seemed dimmer than the room’s other fan.
Huh?!?
Turns out it had three different types of bulbs in it – an incandescent, an LED and a fluorescent – and not one matched the bulbs in the other fan.
Murder me now.
No problem. I figured I would just swap them all out to match the other fan because … well … that’s what genius problem-solvers do!
Only, genius problem-solvers are ignoramuses, and no match for the current state of the light bulb industry. Finding what you need is about as complex as … installing nuclear reactors.
At no store could I find the same brand’s “decorative collection” of LEDs. They were phantom bulbs. They apparently went into my fan and then vanished from existence without a trace.
I spent the rest of my Saturday researching types of available bulbs and bases, wattages and lumens, shapes and varieties, and all manner color “temperatures” that might pair up with the phantoms in my second fan.
I don’t know why there are so many options. Why there can’t just be two: “bright” and “not-so-bright.”
Instead, you have to navigate a smorgasbord of soft light or natural light or nuclear winter light or cool like Fonzie light.
I bought a bulb recently for my desk lamp that was “natural” light. I thought, “Well, that’s better than artificial.” Only when I plugged it in, the room took on the feel of a 1950s Soviet morgue. My daughter walked in and it cast such a hideous hue that I thought she was a zombie. “What happened to your face?!?” I screamed. “That isn’t natural!” She hasn’t spoken to me since.
I went back to good ‘ole soft white, and she looks beautiful, vibrant and, dare I say, among the living again.
Let’s be clear about something: I’m all for more energy efficient light bulbs. The movement away from wasteful incandescents with their energy-hogging filaments and toward more environmentally-friendly light emitters is fine by me. A good thing.
But do we need so many choices? Are our homes that much better with all of these versions and variations and styles?
Even worse, has anyone studied how much energy is wasted by the extra trips we make to the hardware store returning the wrong bulbs? Or the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere when I scream, “OH BLANGIT, I BOUGHT CANDLEABRA AGAIN!!! AAAARGHHHH!!!”
On my fan, I tried bulb after bulb. Different wattages and types. I even started swapping them between the two fans, and still nothing worked. So much carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere that my neighborhood will surely be declared an environmental disaster zone.
Broken and crumbled, I turned to the Internet Gods to help solve my problem. Trembling with exhaustion and frustration, I typed in: “lights dimming after installing remote control stupid bulbs suck.”
The Internet Gods chuckled. They responded with this: “Make sure the remote control doesn’t have a secret dimmer control. Because dum-dums like you might be blaming the bulbs, but you just didn’t read all the instructions.”
I’ll be a son of a …!!!
That was it. Hold down the light button on the remote, and the bulbs magically brighten. Just like that, they matched the glow of the other fan. I collapsed in exhaustion, crushing at least half of the 32,000 bulbs I had bought. (It will take me weeks to return the rest, and goodness knows how much gasoline.)
You can chalk it up to user error – Fine! Whatever! – but I still hate light bulbs. Even more so now. We never had this trouble in Medieval castles. And our children never looked like walking zombies.