The Light Switch Mystery Revealed A New Mystery

I finished up in the sewing room yesterday after dark, and headed to our bedroom to get comfy in my brand new-to-me oversized red leather chair to get some computer work done. As I walked in the bedroom, I flicked the light switch with my elbow since my arms were full, and kept walking. But the light didn't come on. I knew Sam was following me, so I headed to my comfy chair and settled in as I asked him to get the light. But the light didn't come on. Again.

Sam did the wiring in our house when we built it. I love all the wiring that he's done. Every room in our house, besides the kids bedrooms and the bathrooms, are wired with two sets of light switches. The rooms in our house are pretty much pass-through types. We like to live in a circle here, I guess. It made a lot of sense to me that Sam put a light switch at the door when we walk into the laundry room from outside, and another when we walk into the laundry room from inside. The laundry room is a long, narrow space between the rest of the house and the great outdoors. It would totally suck to come home at night and carry an armload of groceries to the other end of the room just to turn a light on. And it would equally suck to have to carry a load of laundry through the space to the other end just to flip a switch to see what setting you're working with on the washer. A switch at each end of the room just is smart. Ditto for the living room, dining room, kitchen, both the upstairs and downstairs hallways, and our bedroom.

Since the light didn't come on when Sam flipped the switch inside our bedroom door, he walked to our master bath to try that switch. It must have been in that mid state where its neither flipped or nor down and tripping the system. But no, that wasn't the case. Because it's human nature, he stood there and flipped the switch a few times while trying to think what the problem could be, and I wondered if somehow the chain got pulled on our ceiling fan to turn the light off. While Sam was flipping switches, I was pulling chains. I never know which is for the light and which is for the fan. We don't ever touch either. That's what all those switches are for on the wall.

At some point in the chain pulling and switch flicking game, the light came on. We could see! And see I did. I saw a large chunk of glass lying on the floor at my feet. It took a second for my mind to stop being all "Whaaaaaaa? Where did that come from?" and realize that there was glass right above me. In the ceiling fan light's globe. And sure enough, there was a large piece missing from the glass.

We speculated for quite a while on what could have done that damage. There was never any question of WHO did the damage. A certain small boy with Down syndrome who shall remain nameless has a love of tossing things at ceiling fans to see if said things will get stuck on the fan blades. This amuses him greatly. And since he's always tossed Woody and the rest of the Round Up Gang at the fans, its never been an issue before. A stuffed doll, even with hard plastic boots, can't break glass that thick.

And then Sam saw the frying pan lying on the floor. The mini cast iron frying pan that Micah gifted himself for Christmas had been tossed aside and abandoned. And I'm guessing that it was because that skillet did something Woody never did, and Micah ran from the scene of the accident like an uninsured motorist.

Sam was never happy with that ceiling fan. I guess this will be an excuse to get a new one.