They say it takes ten thousand hours of practice to get good at something, but they’re wrong. I only changed light bulbs for 120 total hours over winter break, and I can already bulb with the best of ‘em. I’m talking one handed here, folks. It’s great to be back here in South Bend, and not in a sarcastic-Facebook-status-about-how-the-weather-miraculously-happens-to be-colder-in-Indiana-than-wherever-you’re-blessed-enough-to-be-from sense. I love being back at school, back at my recently ransacked house, back with my despicable friends, and back sleeping in the back of the classrooms. I’m here, I’ve flopped back downstream from my spawning ground in Wisconsin, and it’s time to complain in public. Changing light bulbs full time on the night shift is not a fun vacation. This conversation has happened word for word around 40 times:
Person: “How was your break?”
Me: “Terrible!”
Them: “Haha, okay! Mine was good too!”
Nobody wants to hear my sob story, so I thought I’d try writing it. Originally, I had planned to return to South Bend immediately after New Year’s, because I could work a little and sleep a lot. That changed when I found out I had the wonderful opportunity to help convert the town school district’s lighting fixtures to the more energy efficient kind (or as I understood it, switch the ones with the gray nobs to the ones with the green ones) for 10 whole American dollars an hour, 40 hours a week, for three whole weeks. Of course I took it; what do I look like, some kind of idiot? (Of course not, you have no idea what I look like because you’re reading this.) Anyway, I got extremely good at opening a ladder up, climbing it, opening the fixture, and changing out the dusty old bulbs (good band name?) for shiny new earth-conscious ones. I could spend some of my word count telling you all about which fixtures make for easy bulbing and which are tricky, but let’s be honest, no one wants that.
Shockingly, the job wasn’t interesting at all. When the bulbs smashed, that was pretty awesome, because they made a really loud pop and then you could stop changing bulbs for a few minutes to clean up your mess – except when a bunch broke in that one small closet, and I coughed myself to sleep that night convinced I had mercury poisoning. I pictured the bad guy robot from Terminator 2: Judgment Day swimming around in my veins.
The janitors I worked with/for liked to take really long breaks. Working the night shift meant I didn’t have to set an alarm when I passed out after work. My shoulders are probably stronger from holding my arms above my head so much. I could listen to music on the clock.
In conclusion, how many Reggies does it take to change thousands of light bulbs? Answer: One really bored and poor one. That wasn’t the joke, this is: they ended up paying me 8 bucks an hour for my time despite the promised 10, and I couldn’t do anything about it. And I got a speeding ticket on my way back to school, fleeing from the light bulbs. So many light bulbs.
