AN ELECTRIFYING EXPERIENCE

As Big Bore was headed to work Saturday morning, I made the mistake of asking him if he needed anything at ALCO, since I was going to be doing my one-stop shopping there later in the day. Yes, indeed, he did need something…an extension plug. He explained to me what it looked like.

“It will be gray or orange, about two inches long, and it will have three prongs on the male side, two flat and one round. The female side has three holes, one round one at the top, two narrow ones below and one is slightly longer than the other…blah, blah, blah….”

Now when God was dishing out electrical smarts, I was given a dim bulb.

“You’d better write this all down for me. By the time I get to ALCO, I will have forgotten it,” I said.

“Better yet. I’ll draw one for you,” BB offered.

Much better. I’m a visual learner. He proceeded to create the best damned extension plug I’d ever seen. Three dimensional, both sides. To scale, even. An idiot would be able to identify it. So, off I happily went to ALCO, picture in hand….only I couldn’t find one that looked like Big Bore’s drawing.

“Did you find everything you needed?” the assistant manager asked as I checked out.

“Well, not really,” and I showed him the picture.

“No, I’m afraid we don’t have that one,” he said. “I'd try Home Lumber and Supply. Sure is a good drawing.”

Off I went.

“Hi, girl, whatcha need?” the Home Lumber manager greeted me.

“Oh, I’m on a mission to find an extension plug like this one,” and I showed her the drawing.

“Nope,” she said. “Never even seen one like that before.”

A customer next to me took a look. “You’ll have to go out of town to find one like that,” he said. “Nice drawing, though.”

Well, I had one place left to hit up, Stanley Hardware. This joint is stuffed with merchandise, so surely I would succeed there.

“Here’s the closest thing we have to the drawing.” The manager lady showed me a plug that had one male side like Big Bore wanted, but three female sides.

“You know, I think I’d just better let him deal with this himself,” I said and left empty-handed.

When I picked up Big Bore from work, I told him of my three failed attempts to make his purchase.

“Oh, I bet you just didn’t look closely enough,” he said. “They have 'em.”

“I did, too, look closely. I even showed your picture to all the managers and they said they didn’t have it. Your drawing drew raves, though.”

He was still skeptical, so I suggested he go look for himself at Stanley’s, which is next door to Dollar General, where I was headed. I dropped him off, went on to the DG, and as I was at the check-out stand there, he walked in…extension plug in hand.

“They had it,” he said, showing it to me.

“Well, that’s not like the one in your drawing!” I protested, noting that the male side of his purchase did not have the rounded prong.

“Yeah, I was wrong," he readily admitted. "I put in an extra prong. My bad.”

We both had a good laugh and he went on back in the store to get a Pepsi.

“Boy, that’s a first,” the check-out gal said to me, as I turned my attention back to her.

“A first for what?” I asked.

“A man admitting he’s wrong.”

Now, we amateur lady electricians have another name for that; it's called: “Shocking!”