On my third trip to the hardware store to get the right lightbulb, I had my fingers crossed that I wouldn’t come face to face with the same sales clerk again. They were patient the first two times as I scrutinized the confusingly long aisle of lightbulbs this morning, but I know patience reaches a limit. Plus, I had encountered a little incident with this person just a few weeks back when I was trying to conquer my confusion in the ladder section.
Until then, I had been happy enough to drag my dining room table across the room to where the offending lightbulb had gone out in the decorative ceiling fixture high above. Thankfully it’s one of those tall tables, so I could easily scurry up a chair to reach the top of it and look up – way up – to twist the old bulb out and the new one in. But everyone was after me about safety all of a sudden, as though a 65 year old is no longer adept at swinging high up onto their own furniture in their own home.
Fine, then, I would purchase a ladder for the first time in my life. And so began that particular project’s odyssey deep into the bowels of the hardware store. Like, do you know how far back in the cave you need to journey to find that aisle? Way past the furnace filter section and the seasonal garden centre where I usually spend my time. But I finally found it and prowled slowly along the myriad of apparatus. Some were fabricated from a new age lightweight material, others folded miraculously into scaffolding which is ‘perfect for any job’. Really? I bet it can’t muster a clam linguini.
My search narrowed to a small section where simple step ladders stood side by side according to height. Hmmm… hadn’t thought of that. How tall does it need to be to hoist me and my little lightbulb once or twice a year? If it got me as tall as when I stood reaching from atop the dining table, that should suffice.
So I had two ladders, with two feet of height’s difference between them, placed strategically in the aisle as I worked through my process: shimmied up to the ladder to determine where the height of my table landed (a little lower than the base of my ribcage); climbed the rungs to meet that height; threw my hands high into the cavernous reach above me; tried to visualize where my light fixture would be if I were at home; gave myself an extra moment of stretching because for a moment it felt like yoga class.
The Clerk was there, though, with hands on hips and a slew of questions. How tall is my ceiling? (are you kidding?) Don’t I have a tape measure? (only the soft kind I had to buy for Home Ec class in 1974) Can I not read the sign that says to ask The Clerk for assistance with ladders? (oops)
That particular standoff ended with me buying a ladder far too long to fit in my car properly. I needed help to both lower my seat backs and to hoist the giant contraption inside. I tied the trunk room down with the extension cord that I found inside and wrapped a reusable grocery bag to the end of the ladder to alert drivers behind me to the extended cargo. Then dragged the huge thing into the condo and set it up in my living room because there is no storage area large enough to place it in.
Now I’m driving back for the third time to find the right lightbulb in the big, confusing world. And they thought standing on a table was dangerous!