The Electric Slide

Electric. Such a wonderful thing when it's working properly. When it's not working properly, it's rather freaky, as the Smoot clan has recently learned.

We were doing our part last week to watch our 12 hours of television a night when lights in the house started doing this weird thing. They'd go dim for a bit, and then they'd return to normal. The lights in our bathroom would get doubly bright and flicker, as though being operated by people who make horror movies. For a while we figured it was one of those things that just go along with the temperature being 5 below outside, and we assumed it affected the whole neighborhood.

A couple hours later it was still going on, so we finally called the electric company. They came out and happily informed us that everything was fine on their end, so neener neener neener, it was our problem. As a precaution, we turned off the furnace and enjoyed a "restful" night of sleep. It was 46 degrees in the house when we got up the next morning.

I spent the next day calling everyone in the phone book who might have any knowledge at all about electric, and as a result the house quickly became a convention center of people peering at various wires and making extremely helpful and optimistic remarks like, "Hmmm. In 20 years, I've never seen anything like THIS before!"

And into the night it went without a resolution. Mrs. Smoot and Little Smoot fled to a hotel for a night, while I stayed here with whatever Poltergeists were infesting our wires. I took the precaution of setting a smoke detector right beside our electrical panel, and I took my cell phone to bed with me. I thought about pressing "9-1" on the phone so I could just push the other "1" really fast if I needed to.

Finally, on Day 3 of Electrical Mayhem, a contractor found the problem. Turns out the geniuses who put the house together didn't properly seal the wire that comes into the house from the meter, and it had corroded after years of having water dripped onto it.

As I type this, the contractor is here for his third – and hopefully final – time. Which means I'll be writing him yet another handsome check. I'm finding myself admiring those Amish folks more and more each day…