Sometimes Apples Do Fall Far From the Tree

My mom, toiling away in my kitchen last year

My mom is a do-it-yourself type of woman.  I can't tell you how many times I've gone to her house and found her standing in a cloud of dust because she decided she just had to knock down a cabinet or paint a wall or rip up some carpeting.  Sometimes this works out and sometimes it doesn't, but there's a part of me that gets a little scared when she discusses plans to take welding classes.  I don't want to have to take care of her if she's elderly AND blind.

On Friday night, an electrical outlet in my kitchen started making this loud clicking noise.  I tried to fix it in my usual way, which was turning up the volume of the Indigo Girls CD I was playing on my laptop, but several hours later, it was still there.  I turned to my favorite fix-it expert, Handyman Google, and read that the clicking meant the outlet had shorted out.  There were eighty comments about how simple it was to remove the outlet, so the spirit of my mom's home improvement enthusiasm entered me and I thought, "Well, of course I can fix that myself!"  Famous last words.

I flipped the circuit breaker thing to turn off the electricity in the kitchen.  Then, I carefully used a screwdriver to remove the plate, pried the outlet out and tugged and tugged until the wires came out of the outlet.  Satisfied with my incredible handiwork, I decided to shove the wires back into the wall to hide them.  As soon as I started to do this, sparks shot up about three feet in the air, hitting the wall and the cabinet and sending me screeching back into the living room.  This kind of thing never happens on "This Old House."

It was 2 AM, so I couldn't exactly call an electrician.  Instead, I slept on the couch and woke up every hour on the hour, convinced that my kitchen would be engulfed in flames and that the entire building would burn down due to my repair work.  It was not a very restful evening.

The next day, I called Miss Fix-It herself.  She assured me that fixing my butchered repair job would be simple as pie and described putting caps on the ends of wires and a bunch of other steps while I barely listened.  When I told her I was afraid to even go in the kitchen let alone handle the wires, she assured me that the outlet was fine to mess with and that the reason it sparked like that is because the outlet always has a live wire in it, even if the electricity is off.  Hmmm.  When I questioned this, she got defensive and said, "If you're so worried about it, call my brother Joe the electrician and he'll tell you the same thing."

I got my shoes on to go get the cap stuff but as an afterthought decided to give my uncle Joe a call.  He listened very patiently as I displayed my lack of knowledge about electricity in general.  I said, "I know there's always a live wire in there and that's why it sparked like that, but is it okay if I touch it to put the cap thing on?"  To my credit, I didn't add "or whatever" at the end of the sentence, but in every other way I sounded like a brainless valley girl.  

Well, needless to say my uncle didn't give me tips on how to further accidentally almost kill myself and instead came over and repaired the outlet.  It turns out I tripped the wrong circuit breaker and actually used a screwdriver on a live outlet.  That could have been bad.   Oh, and also my mom's theory about there always being a live wire in an outlet was 100% incorrect.  I am kind of wondering if she was trying to kill me with that advice.  She does have two back-up daughters, so you never know.

Now I'm really worried about those welding classes.