My office here at home is a little on the dark side. I have one light on the ceiling but that’s it. It’s a normal light and provides as much, uh, light as a normal, uh, light does, but since it’s overhead and a little bit behind me when I’m sitting at my desk, it creates a Chuck-shaped shadow on whatever I happen be working on. So everything is well-lit (if not clean) except what I most need to be well-lit.

Fortunately, I also have a lamp on the desk. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. Hasn’t worked for more than a year, at least. I look at it frequently, there in the shadow of my biggianthead, and I think of how much more light I would have if only it had a new bulb in it. But it’s a halogen lamp, and those things are a pain in the ass.

Because, first off, I can’t just get a halogen bulb at the grocery store, no, I’d have to make a special trip another five minutes or so to go to Office Depot to find one. And the times I find myself driving past Office Depot — or maybe even inside Office Depot — I can’t remember what size halogen bulb it takes, and I’m not going to buy one on faith because then I’d have to make another trip back to exchange it if I got the wrong size and of course I’d get the wrong size and I had enough damn trouble getting here in the first damned place so I know I’d just never come back to make the exchange so screw it already. And then even if I did have all my ducks in a row and I knew I was going to be at Office Depot and knew what size bulb I needed, those damned halogen bulbs are expensive enough to offend my inner cheapskate and I’d spend half an hour comparing them and debating and hemming and hawing and then I’d probably leave without buying it anyway. So the punchline from the old joke “How many Jewish grandmothers does it take to change a lightbulb?” applies: “Never mind, I’ll just sit in the dark.”

So I frequently sit here in the dark and gaze longingly at my desk lamp and dream of what could be. And then I shake my head and get back to working by touch. Because never mind.

Well, today I was looking at the lamp in the dim of the afternoon and a thought occurred: Are you sure the bulb is burned out? Have you actually, you know, tried it lately? Ever? Do you remember trying it? Ever? And I had to answer “No” to all. So I took a chance, I flicked the switch to turn it on.

Well.

This is the part where you’re all expecting me to say that, whoa, the light worked! It wasn’t burned out at all! Right? Well, you’re wrong. I flipped that switch and nothing happened. Noth. Thing. Zip. Darkness continued. Etcetera.

Not so smart now, are you? So settle down there with your holier-than-though attitudes about how stupid you thought I was, all right? Because, no, it did not work when I turned it on.

But it did when I plugged it in.