Monday, April 08, 2013

The day I did surgery on a lamp

I was sitting curled up on the couch, reading by the light of the lamp on my end table.  I finished my chapter and got up to make dinner, pulling the cord of the lamp to switch it off.

And the cord came right out of the lamp and ended up in my hand.

Since the lamp was new and I'd have to buy a new one anyway, I figured I'd try to fix it.  Nothing to lose, right? So I unplugged it, took out the lightbulb, and started unscrewing anything that would unscrew and tugging anything that would tug.  Eventually, I had a nice little row of lined-up lamp parts, and I could see where the string had come from.  There was a bit of string still in there and attached to the switch, so I tried to tie the broken-off end to the remaining bit.  However, it was a bit of a tight squeeze and I couldn't get my fingers in, or manoeuvre it with tweezers.  So I tugged and twisted some more until I could see where and how the remaining bit of string was attached to the lamp, and then realized that it was a relatively simple matter to pull it out and replace it with a new and longer piece of string.

By this time, my neat little row of lined-up lamp parts had gotten disorganized, so I had to go through some trial and error and logic to figure out how to put it back together.  But my efforts were ultimately successful, and the lamp now turns on and off when I tug the new piece of string!  Now I just need to figure out how to reattach the decorative little dangly piece that normally hangs from the string, but that's easier because it's outside the lamp and the lamp is still functional even with the decorative little dangly piece.

This was absolutely amazing to me, because it was literally the first time in my entire life that I've fixed something without either having instructions or having first been in some way taught how to do it! Even my tech support skills, which include figuring out software from scratch, are based on a broadly-applicable methodology.

I blogged before about my experience figuring out how to assemble and disassemble a desk chair (for which I did have instructions, mediocre as they were).  This was similar - I looked at it, fiddled with it a bit, stepped away, came back with new inspiration, all over the period of a couple of days.  This is especially amazing to me because I literally could not figure things out like this when I was younger (e.g. in my teens).  I either would or wouldn't know how to do it, but no further enlightenment was forthcoming.

I had no idea that it was even a possibility for these kinds of cognitive skills to actually improve with age after adulthood is reached!  This gives me a lot of hope for the future that I may still have the ability to improve and gain skills in areas I never before thought possible.

1 comment:

laura k said...

I am incredibly impressed.

As it happens, I have a broken lamp that I want to fix. I can't find the same lamp to buy, and I don't know where to start to fix the broken one.