The End of the World? Or just my Pride

Well, I’m glad the world didn’t end on the 21st. The Mayans got it wrong. But I did have an interesting “Most Embarrassing Moment” experience.

Early in the morning Nancy was blow-drying her hair and tripped a circuit breaker. I was still in bed and as she walked by she said, “Can you help me, the power is out in the bathroom.”

I got up and walked out to the garage and Nancy was flipping breakers. I thought she was just randomly throwing breakers so I told her to stop and let me fix it. It’s a man’s job after all—isn’t it?

I couldn’t see any blown circuits so I thought she might have already fixed it. I went back into the house and into our bathroom and the power was still off. Strange. Back to the circuit board and checked more carefully—still nothing. Back to the bedroom and bathroom to check the ground fault interrupt outlets—nothing. Strange! I kept checking the breakers and nothing worked. The power was out in our bathroom, bedroom, the guest bedroom, the front room, and the den in the basement. Very strange! I couldn’t believe all those rooms were on the same circuit, and WHY were there no thrown breakers? It didn’t make any sense!

The next day all the kids were coming home for Christmas and the power was out to half the house. I did everything I could think of and nothing worked. Finally I gave up and shaved and dressed in the dark and went to work.

Fortunately my council president (and therefor my boss) runs Wheeler Electric, an electrical contracting business. After I had got past the morning rush of emails, phone messages, mail, and other office minutia, I called Jeff and explained my problem. He told me he would send one of his electricians right over. I drove home and took the cover panel off the circuit box while I waited for the electrician.

A Wheeler Electric truck pulled up in front of our house and two guys got out. First I showed them the circuit box then I took them into the bathroom and bedrooms and showed them the problem. They used a gizmo to check the outlets. Some were working and some weren’t. One guy said, “It looks like you might have lost your neutral line.” They went to their truck and got another gizmo then went back to the circuit box and started checking the voltage in each line. The guy pointed to about six double breakers and asked, “Did you turn these off?” I then had one of those awkward “I’m an idiot” moments.

I flipped all six breakers from ‘off’ to ‘on’ and guess what? All the lights came back on! The electricians were very polite—at least until they got back into their truck. I called and thanked Jeff and admitted to being an idiot. He laughed and said, “It didn’t sound like it was anything too bad.”

In my defense, the double circuits were all aligned in the same positions so I assumed . . .
You know the old saying about assuming? It’s true! When the circuits were in the off position I couldn’t see the words ‘off’ because they were covered by the switches and when the circuit box cover was on it blocked the words ‘on’ so it was a bit confusing.

It makes me wonder if the Mayans were predicting the end of my dignity.