Light Bulb Jokes

Don’t you just love those old light bulb jokes? They usually go something like this:  How many persons (of a certain group) does it take to change a light bulb? We laugh because the joke pokes fun at the target group, be they lawyers, psychiatrists, or jugglers. The joke is funny because changing a light bulb is easy, right?

Or so I thought. We moved into our current house about five years ago.  It’s a 1950s era house, but it was completely remodeled before we bought it. A few months ago, I noticed one of the lights over the bathroom sink was not lit. I reached up into the fixture to unscrew the bulb. There was no bulb like any I had ever seen. Instead, there was a glass bit about the size of my little finger beyond the second knuckle. I tried to twist it like unscrewing a regular light bulb, but it wouldn’t move. I got a flashlight and craned my neck to look up into the fixture to see if I could figure out how to remove the burned-out bulb. I saw the little glass bit sticking out of a round ceramic piece. Now was the ceramic piece and glass one unit that could be unscrewed, or were they separate pieces? I grasped the glass piece and tried twisting, but nothing moved. So, I tried gently tugging the glass, and it slowly came out.

I’d never seen a light like it, but after some investigation via the internet, I discovered that it was a type of halogen bulb. I found a place online that sold them, and after my order was delivered, I gently pushed one into the empty fixture. I felt a sense of pride when it lit up. Not only had I figured out this new-fangled light bulb, but now I had several spares ready for when the next one burned out.

A few months later, the light in our shower burned out. With my newfound sense of confidence, I figured I could get this done in no time. This fixture had a glass cover, which I assumed was to protect the light bulb from shower spray. I carefully tugged at the cover to expose the bulb, but the cover didn’t come off. Instead, the whole fixture came out of the ceiling, though it was still attached to my home’s electrical system by a wire. I jiggled a few parts of the fixture trying to figure out how to access the bulb, and then all the other lights in the bathroom went dark. Apparently, I had tripped a breaker, yet still had no idea how to get to whatever bulb type was inside the fixture.

At that point, I realized that changing this light bulb might just be beyond my limited handyman capabilities. I carefully pushed the fixture back into the ceiling, reset the breaker, and called my electrician. Since this was not an emergency, it took a few days for the electrician to come. I felt slightly less incompetent when he struggled to figure out how to remove the old bulb – an R20 LED bulb. Since I did not have an appropriate replacement, the electrician had to drive to the local hardware store to purchase one.

The bottom line was a bill for $93 from my electrician, which I was grateful to pay. I had hoped to learn from him how to do it myself the next time the bulb needs to be replaced. However, the only thing I learned was I needed to keep his number handy when that next time happened.

Oh, and how many jugglers does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but it takes three bulbs.