It was an ordinary day, nothing really extraordinary happening, at least for me. That was until the sparks started flying, and my oldest son, lovingly and innocently looked up at me with a bewildered face.
“Dad, did you know that was going to happen?”
Jokingly, I looked back at him, and said, “Of course I did. Why do you think I asked you to do it?”
After years of injuring myself and shocking myself every time I do something, it’s time to pass the torch. This requires me to teach my son everything that I know … and stand far back.
Electricity is a daunting task that I hate to muddle with, but it is a necessary evil. Sometimes I have the outlets mislabeled in the circuit breaker, leaving me to wire something incorrectly while it’s hot. It doesn’t take long to figure out that it’s hot.
One loud bang and a good spark just before the adjacent light shuts off is all you need to be reminded. The subtle hint provided by that darkness reminds me why I hate dealing with electricity.
I try to take every precaution necessary, but sometimes, haste beseeches me, and I overlook something. One such time was when I was working in the cold, trying to change the battery in the family minivan. It’s an innocent mistake when the battery is dead, but installing the new one proved to be more difficult.
Using a long wrench to turn the nuts on the end battery terminals allowed an overzealous hand to rotate the nut too far and make contact with the other terminal. This completed the circuit, caused the spark and created an arc of electricity strong enough to melt part of the wrench.
I bet that’s why they use small nuts on battery terminals, to prevent you from using a long crescent wrench like I did when my fingertips were too cold to fumble in the tool chest, looking for a smaller wrench — a lesson I’d hope I’d remember.
Unfortunately, as I was showing my son how to change a battery, the spark reignited the memory that had long faded away. It was something I wish I could have remembered, but now I hope that he will. Nonetheless, it gave me a brilliant idea.
Since I had recently tilled in the garden to overseed with wheat, I managed to “all-till” in a large waterer. This meant that the plastic wheels were torn to pieces and a piece of the metal tube that was used to transfer the water to the sprayer had suffered serious damage. The replacement cost would be about a hundred dollars.
Thinking of the spark that burned through the metal handle of the wrench, I am inspired to use an electrode and a battery charger to attempt to arc weld a repair on the metal tube.
Although I’ve never really welded before, it’s not a large area. I have plenty of sunglasses and can squint my eyes for some makeshift protection.
Not to mention, I rarely like to look at dangerous things when I’m about to do them.
