I just finished up a note to my future self.
I did it with an Extra Fine Point Sharpie, the tool of choice for such things, since Sharpie ink isn’t likely to wear off over time, and any Sharpie, even the Extra Fine Point version, makes big bold letters.
This will be helpful to the future me, whose vision will surely have deteriorated by the time he reads it.
My message consists of the words, “Too bright!” scrawled on the sides of a yellow cardboard light bulb box.
That little box, which is otherwise labeled “Satco HALOGEN LAMP,” is destined for a drawer in the dining room sideboard, where it will live, presumably for some years, in a promiscuous jumble with countless other little cardboard boxes, each bearing mysterious priestly markings like “JD E11,” or “Mini can,” or “GY 6.35 base.”
Over the last few years, there’s been a great proliferation in the world of household lighting, like one of those sudden explosions in biodiversity that filled the ancient seas with every manner of creepy crawly. Where once there were only a few types of bulbs, identical but for a nice even number indicating wattage, now there are bulbs of every shape, size, voltage, filament type, and base size imaginable.
Unfortunately, the science of bulb labeling hasn’t managed to keep up. As often as not, I’ll pull a dead bulb from some Ikea fixture or other, only to discover that the poor blackened thing is as bald and unmarked as a newborn.
I’ll take the bulb over to my computer and park it by the keyboard, where it will sit, forlorn, like a patient awaiting diagnosis, while I try to look it up on the Internet.
Happily, there are websites with names like “topbulb.com” and “bulbster.com” that claim to offer instruction in the art of “visual bulb identification,” but which are actually electrical supply houses eager to help you put a name, rank, and serial number to your bulb so you can order a replacement.
One of these helpful sites taught me a trick for identifying the tiny halogen bulb in a kitchen pendant fixture: all you need is loose pocket change! The fact that three U.S. quarters fit snugly between the bayonet pins at the bottom of my bulb was definitive: I was dealing with a standard GY 6.35 base.
Duh!
Of course, just knowing the base size didn’t really narrow it down. There were other hurdles to overcome: wattage; filament type, voltage. Was it a 12 volt bulb, or a 120 volt bulb?
Both would fit in the socket, but only one would work.
The other halogen lights in our kitchen were all 12 volt, thanks to a transformer hidden in the recessed can. Why should the pendant be any different?
I ordered the 12 volt bulb from Amazon for the princely sum of $5.59, only to watch it flash into oblivion when I threw the light switch.
(Oops. Should have gone with the 120.)
It’s maddening, all these different bulbs, with their absurdly engineered bases and their sneaky unmarked voltages. The only way to cope is to keep all the packaging in a special drawer, and make sure to write copious notes to one’s future self.
Take, for instance, our daughter’s reading light. When she came to me last week and told me the bulb had burned out, I had high hopes for my past self. Surely I’d kept the old box. And there it was, right where it was supposed to be in the sideboard! Even better, I’d laid in a replacement bulb in anticipation of the old one’s failing.
I took the replacement up to her room and installed it, a process that involved squeezing myself between a high bed and a low angled ceiling. It took a while to fit the bulb, since I had to screw it in blind, and it was one of those pesky E-11 Mini-candelabra screw-in bases. Perhaps you’ve tangled with one of those tiny monsters yourself.
Eventually, I got it in and told her to hit the switch.
The room lit up like a prison yard. “Whoa!” I said, “way too bright!”
It seemed my past self had ordered the 250 watt version of the stalwart JD E11, rather than the 100 watt.
Moron!
Which is how I came to be sitting at my desk, writing the words “Too bright!” on the side of the little yellow box.
I suppose I should have just thrown it away, but somehow I imagined that my future self would appreciate all the scribbling.
Even if all I managed to do was confuse him — Moron! — at least he’d know I tried.
