Let me preface this by saying that I am not stupid. Just lazy and somewhat inept. Do try to keep that in mind while you read on. Also, I do have more interesting things going on in my life than a broken lamp, I swear, but this is the easiest thing to write about.
So, this story actually starts years ago. I was still young and naive and working in Haapsalu. One fine weekend in October I decided to head to Tartu and spend the weekend there, just hanging out and doing my thing (which pretty much means I was planning on crawling into my cave and playing dead so that no-one would disturb me). I reached my apartment on a dark and stormy Friday night and headed straight to my bedroom to unwind from a very stressful drive, but as soon as I entered there was a flash of light and a sizzle as the lightbulb of my bedroom lamp died. I was left in darkness. That was a problem. Kind of. But tired as I was, I decided that it was a problem for future-Grete. Present-Grete did not have the energy to deal with a burnt out lightbulb. Present-Grete wanted to sleep. So I simply shrugged, turned on the bedside lamp and went on with my life, determined to replace the burnt out lightbulb sometime in the near future.
Three years later...
I wish I was kidding here but I'm not. It took me three years to get to changing the lightbulb. To be fair, I lived in Haapsalu for one of those years so it really didn't bother me that the light in my bedroom in Tartu was out. Sure, it was a mild inconvenience every time I went back home but I wasn't going to spend my weekend fixing things around the apartment so that was that. 'But what about the next two years?' I hear you ask. Well, shut up! I was busy, okay!
Okay, fine, I wasn't all that busy. I was just lazy. And there were several issues that prevented me from changing the lightbulb, first of which being the fact that I couldn't really reach the ceiling. Here's the thing: my bedroom lamp is positioned right above my annoyingly big king size bed. When I stand on the bed on tiptoes I can just barely reach the lamp but that wasn't enough to help me actually change the bulb. I can't really move the bed because that would require me to play furniture-tetris, where I would have to move the nightstand, the desk and lord knows what else to actually get the bed moving. Ain't nobody got time for that!
So, for two years I lived in a semi-dark room. I did have a small, practically useless bedside lamp that gave out just enough light that I could find my way out of the room in the mornings. That worked well enough. The darkness didn't really bother me that much anyway. I'm like a fungus: I thrive in the dark. I get to sleep late and pretend to be a vampire and watch horror movies all day long. My bedroom became a cave within a cave - a dark, dank corner where light was just a distant memory of the past and I could get in touch with my true self: a subhuman dweller of the deep worshiping some long forgotten eldritch deity and feeding on the fears of the common folk. Finding matching socks proved to be a problem, though. An annoying problem. I know some people don't make a big deal out of it but I got seriously annoyed whenever I got to work and realised my socks were different shades of black. How mortifying! Things needed to change. I needed to become a functional human being and finally bring some light into my life. Or bedroom. Whichever was easiest. So I went out and bought a new lightbulb.
Quick dad-joke for you guys: how many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb? One, but the lightbulb has to want to change.
There was my second mistake: my lightbulb didn't want to change but I didn't care. I tried to force the process and made matters worse. My first mistake was thinking I could do something as banal as changing the lightbulb on my own. See, I still hadn't addressed the issue of me not reaching the ceiling. I thought I would get to it once I had a new lightbulb in hand. Well, I did kind of get to it. My genius brain saw the lamp and the bed and went: 'but what if we just pile a bunch of pillows on top of it...?' It was a bad idea. I realised it was a bad idea even as I was gathering all the pillows I could find. It was a horrible idea, unlikely to work but it was the only one I had, so... To be fair, it almost worked, for a little while. I almost managed to completely unscrew the deceased lightbulb before I lost my footing. Well, what actually happened was that the top pillow kind of started sliding off the pile, causing it to collapse beneath my feet. Naturally I lost my balance and in my misguided attempt to stay upright I grabbed the first thing I could find to hold on to. That just so happened to be the lamp.
I did managed to not fall off the bed and break my neck but only because the lamp broke my fall... kind of. Or I broke the lamp. Or both. Anyway, there was a loud crack when I grabbed hold of it and, once I'd regained my balance, I realised that the lamp that had previously been securely fastened to the ceiling was now hanging loosely from a long white wire. Well... that wasn't good. My bed was covered in dust and drywall and the lamp itself was hanging several centimetres lower than before. To be fair, that made changing the lightbulb a lot easier than before. I could finally reach the lamp without doing a discount version of Cirque de Soleil and in a few moments I had light in my room for the first time after three years.
Now I just needed to address the bigger issue: the hanging lamp. It took me about fifteen minutes to realise that I had no clue how to approach this new issue. I tried superglue (don't ask me how, I don't want to talk about it) but as soon as it failed me, I knew I was in trouble. Google wasn't much help either so, with utmost horror, I realised I would have to ask for help from... actual human beings. There was always the option to hire someone to fix the lamp for me but I am ridiculously cheap when it comes to home improvement so that was pretty much plan Z on my list. I was determined to fix the problem with as little material cost as possible and without having to explain a professional how I'd managed to wreak such havoc while changing a lightbulb.
Plan A was to call a friend. Preferably a tall friend. And someone who'd know how to deal with... lamp stuff. Apparently it's hard to find both traits in one person so I opted for someone tall rather than lamp-savvy. That was my third mistake. I should have known things weren't going to go well when my not-so-handy friend went: 'Sure, I can come and fix your lamp for you, but how do I do that?' Uhh... Yeah, that was a good question. I'd never had to re-attach a lamp to the ceiling so I had no clue where to start. I needed to do some research, which meant asking the elders for advice (and by 'elders' I really mean people in my social circle older than me). So, apparently - as I found out - I had managed to rip the wall plug out of the ceiling when I was hanging off the lamp. I also found out what a 'wall plug' was. Fun times. Something I realised during my inquiries was that I either had a very sheltered upbringing or I'm some kind of 'special' cause every other person who I asked about it seemed to be well-versed in matters of ceilings and lamps and I literally had to google pictures of wall plugs and compare them to the stuff coming out of my lamp to see if that was what they were talking about. Did I miss some kind of lamp meeting when I was a kid or something?
Anyway, after weeks and weeks of hearing Tall-friend give me the same answer of 'yeah, I think I'll have time to help you out this weekend' and then waiting in vain, he finally made time in his busy schedule to 'help me out'. I developed the sneaking suspicion that he wasn't going to be very helpful when I saw he hadn't brought any tools with him... although I'd told him that he'd need some serious hardware to fix my lamp issue. Cue half an hour of Tall-friend huffing and puffing as he stared at my lamp and whined about what an impossible job this was. In that half an hour I got to hear all the songs on his breakout album "How to make Grete feel like crap while being absolutely useless", which included hits like 'How can you be this helpless?', 'How do you even function in everyday life?', 'Who designed this stupid lamp?' and 'For the love of god, STOP TRYING TO HELP!'. Oh yeah, and the finisher: 'Yeah, I've got no clue what to do here. Get professional help.' Needless to say it was a very underwhelming afternoon that really put a strain on our 'friendship'. Thankfully I'm a kind and forgiving god. Person. I meant to say 'person'.
On to plan B then. B for spectacularly Bad. See, I kind of had an inkling that Tall-friend would prove to be useless, so I devised a plan B while I was waiting for him to get his shit together. Plan B was... a really dumb plan. I want to make it known that at no point during this whole ordeal did I think this was a good idea. Why did I do it then? Well, I'm cheap and I'm bored and it seemed to take minimal effort from my part. Plan B involved me diving into the depressing cesspool and comedy goldmine that is tinder.
'So, wait! You went on tinder to find a handyman?' I hear you ask incredulously, 'That sounds like a terrible idea!'
I know! I already told you guys: I knew it was a horrible idea. You know, a friend once told me the story of how she wanted to see a bear in the wild so, while in some national park, she slathered some honey on a tree stump and waited. I remember thinking 'Oh, honey, that sounds like an absolute disaster waiting to happen? Why would anyone do something so foolish?' Well, now I was pretty much doing the same thing... But I really didn't want to pay a professional to handle the problem and it took close to zero effort to create a profile and start looking. To be fair to myself, I made it clear in my bio that I was only looking for someone to fix my lamp, that it wasn't a metaphor or some kind of weird pick-up line - I only needed someone to FIX MY LAMP. Lo and behold, suddenly there was a bunch of guys willing to help me out. Most of them seemed to think that I couldn't figure out how to change a lightbulb (okay, I know I'm kind of dumb, but nobody's that dumb... right?) and were pretty much stumped when I described the actual problem and the logistics of it. Others were just... plain dense. I had way too many conversations go like:
Him: 'So, what's wrong with your lamp?'
Me: 'It's basically hanging by a wire after I pulled it out of the ceiling. I can't really fix it cause it's right over my bed and I can't reach it.'
Him: 'So it's in your bedroom. I see ;)'
Me: 'No. No, you don't. It's a literal lamp in a literal ceiling, that just so happens to be in my bedroom. Once again: this is not a pickup line!'
Him: 'A dark bedroom is not always a bad thing ;)'
Me: 'IT'S NOT DARK! The lightbulb works perfectly! I just need someone to FIX MY LAMP!'
Aaaaaand so on and so forth. It took me a while to find someone who seemed to know what he was talking about and was ready to give it a try. I was a bit apprehensive when he asked me if I had a screwdriver (like, sure I do, bro, but a screwdriver ain't gonna help you here) but I was way too lazy to look any further and, given my aversion to any sort of social contact, I knew that if I waited too long I would never get anyone over to fix the lamp. Maybe that would have been for the best because I was literally letting a complete stranger into my apartment... on a Friday night... a stranger I found on tinder... I know how this sounds. I can already feel the judgement coming from the other side of the screen, but I figure that if I'm going to do dumb shit, I might as well do all of it before I hit 30. After that I'll try to be a normal, functional adult.
So, on a dark and stormy Friday night (for real, the weather was pretty awful that evening), I let Tinder-guy into my home. Did I feel good about it? Hell no, but I was confident in my ability to drive away any man away if need be (it seems to have worked so far). Now, Tinder-guy seemed like a nice guy, at first. Polite and respectful enough to make me think that maybe, just maybe, my ill-conceived plan had worked and I could finally get my lamp fixed. He didn't bring any tools (although I'd told him several times that he would need more than a screwdriver to fix things) so that made me a bit skeptical, but the kicker came when he saw my lamp and went: 'Oh... there really is a broken lamp? I thought it was a pickup line.'
Bitch... what?
I've heard guys complain that women are 'never clear about what they want' and that it's 'so difficult to understand them'. First of all: once you start talking in hyperbole, you're the real problem because you're basing your opinions on unfounded generalisations. And secondly: I was ABUNDANTLY clear about what I wanted: someone to FIX MY GODDAMN LAMP! I couldn't have made myself any more clear! I told Tinder-guy several times that I only needed to re-attach my lamp to the ceiling, nothing more. So maybe women aren't the problem here? Maybe some guys just don't know how to listen (or read). 'But, Grete, you were on tinder. What did you expect?' I hear you ask. I dunno, I guess I was expecting some BASIC LITERACY! Yeah, yeah, I understand the whole 'but tinder!' argument but I made it clear, several times, that there wouldn't be anything other than some lamp-fixing going on. There is no way I could have made my intentions any more clear without staging an elaborate musical number accompanied by an interpretive dance. And I didn't have the energy to set that up.
Tinder-guy did give it his best shot though. Sadly, his 'best shot' was an abysmal failure. He unscrewed some screws, lost one of them (still haven't found it), and then went about undoing what he'd done. All the while whining. 'How did you manage to achieve this? Were you hanging off your lamp or what?' Yeah, well, I needed something to grab on to while I was falling. Sue me! 'Why were you standing on pillows anyway?!' We went over this: bad planning. I didn't realise at the moment that I had better options. Shit happens. 'Why didn't you tell me that a piece of your ceiling has basically fallen off?' I dunno, didn't seem important at the time and I had a lot on my plate anyway. 'How do you not know how to fix this? How are you this inept?' Okay, that one pissed me off. How do I not know how to re-attach a lamp to the ceiling? Because I've NEVER HAD TO DO IT BEFORE!!! And I missed the secret 'lamp-lecture' everyone else apparently had as a kid or whatever. I also don't know sign language! Guess why! Because I've never had to use it before! I can assemble furniture, I know how to paint the walls of my apartment (and demolish the walls of someone else's), I know how to use a sander and I can build a freaking raft if need be - all because I've done those things before. I've NEVER had to attach a lamp to the ceiling! That's why I don't know how! And it takes a special kind of oblivious asshole to shame you for failing at a task while he is literally in the process of failing at the same task.
After about half an hour of listening to Tinder-guy whine about how poorly constructed my whole apartment was and worry about his well-being after seeing a meat-tenderiser on top of my wardrobe (nothing creepy about that, I just forgot it there after a Halloween party... several years ago), I realised that this was hopeless. He declared fixing my lamp situation to be 'Mission Impossible' and gave up, leaving me no other option but to throw him out as politely as I could. Needless to say that Tinder-guy was thoroughly shocked at this turn of events: he failed at the ONE task I gave him and I DIDN'T want to spend the rest of the night with him?! Madness! Meanwhile, I was very successful in removing him from my presence, so at least I had that going for me. My lamp was in worse shape than before though, missing a screw and all that, so I guess I can safely say that plan B failed as well.
I haven't gotten to plan C yet. I'm not sure what it is yet. Considering that my lamp has the magical ability to turn grown men into whiny little girls, I think I'm going to have to fix the thing on my own. If I have to listen to another lecture on my inability to succeed in the most mundane tasks without breaking everything in sight, someone's going to get hurt. Probably me. Probably emotionally. But someone is sure to get hurt. So, plan C is going to entail me borrowing a ladder, getting up close and personal with the lamp and fixing that little bastard like there's no tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I can do it, if I finally manage to get close enough to the ceiling. At least I know I won't be whining like a little bitch the whole time I'm trying. And if I can't, there's always plan D: summoning a demon from the pits of Hell to possess my lamp so it would fix itself. At least there are wikiHow guides on summoning demons so I'll have something to go on. And yes, I do realise how crazy it sounds to conjuring a malevolent spirit before summoning a physical, human handyman but that's just how cheap I am. Summoning a demon only costs you your soul and I barely have one left anyway.
Until I exhaust all of my options, or one of my plans works, I'm left with the evidence of my shameful failure staring right at me every morning I wake up and every night as I fall asleep. In a way, that broken lamp has become an apt metaphor for my life: a barely functional hot mess that's horrible to look at but somehow still works, despite everything. It might be kind of broken and missing a few pieces but at least it's mine and it does its job. Does it need fixing? Sure, of course it does. And the only person who can truly fix it is me. Or, like, a professional electrician or something...?
Plan A was to call a friend. Preferably a tall friend. And someone who'd know how to deal with... lamp stuff. Apparently it's hard to find both traits in one person so I opted for someone tall rather than lamp-savvy. That was my third mistake. I should have known things weren't going to go well when my not-so-handy friend went: 'Sure, I can come and fix your lamp for you, but how do I do that?' Uhh... Yeah, that was a good question. I'd never had to re-attach a lamp to the ceiling so I had no clue where to start. I needed to do some research, which meant asking the elders for advice (and by 'elders' I really mean people in my social circle older than me). So, apparently - as I found out - I had managed to rip the wall plug out of the ceiling when I was hanging off the lamp. I also found out what a 'wall plug' was. Fun times. Something I realised during my inquiries was that I either had a very sheltered upbringing or I'm some kind of 'special' cause every other person who I asked about it seemed to be well-versed in matters of ceilings and lamps and I literally had to google pictures of wall plugs and compare them to the stuff coming out of my lamp to see if that was what they were talking about. Did I miss some kind of lamp meeting when I was a kid or something?
Anyway, after weeks and weeks of hearing Tall-friend give me the same answer of 'yeah, I think I'll have time to help you out this weekend' and then waiting in vain, he finally made time in his busy schedule to 'help me out'. I developed the sneaking suspicion that he wasn't going to be very helpful when I saw he hadn't brought any tools with him... although I'd told him that he'd need some serious hardware to fix my lamp issue. Cue half an hour of Tall-friend huffing and puffing as he stared at my lamp and whined about what an impossible job this was. In that half an hour I got to hear all the songs on his breakout album "How to make Grete feel like crap while being absolutely useless", which included hits like 'How can you be this helpless?', 'How do you even function in everyday life?', 'Who designed this stupid lamp?' and 'For the love of god, STOP TRYING TO HELP!'. Oh yeah, and the finisher: 'Yeah, I've got no clue what to do here. Get professional help.' Needless to say it was a very underwhelming afternoon that really put a strain on our 'friendship'. Thankfully I'm a kind and forgiving god. Person. I meant to say 'person'.
On to plan B then. B for spectacularly Bad. See, I kind of had an inkling that Tall-friend would prove to be useless, so I devised a plan B while I was waiting for him to get his shit together. Plan B was... a really dumb plan. I want to make it known that at no point during this whole ordeal did I think this was a good idea. Why did I do it then? Well, I'm cheap and I'm bored and it seemed to take minimal effort from my part. Plan B involved me diving into the depressing cesspool and comedy goldmine that is tinder.
'So, wait! You went on tinder to find a handyman?' I hear you ask incredulously, 'That sounds like a terrible idea!'
I know! I already told you guys: I knew it was a horrible idea. You know, a friend once told me the story of how she wanted to see a bear in the wild so, while in some national park, she slathered some honey on a tree stump and waited. I remember thinking 'Oh, honey, that sounds like an absolute disaster waiting to happen? Why would anyone do something so foolish?' Well, now I was pretty much doing the same thing... But I really didn't want to pay a professional to handle the problem and it took close to zero effort to create a profile and start looking. To be fair to myself, I made it clear in my bio that I was only looking for someone to fix my lamp, that it wasn't a metaphor or some kind of weird pick-up line - I only needed someone to FIX MY LAMP. Lo and behold, suddenly there was a bunch of guys willing to help me out. Most of them seemed to think that I couldn't figure out how to change a lightbulb (okay, I know I'm kind of dumb, but nobody's that dumb... right?) and were pretty much stumped when I described the actual problem and the logistics of it. Others were just... plain dense. I had way too many conversations go like:
Him: 'So, what's wrong with your lamp?'
Me: 'It's basically hanging by a wire after I pulled it out of the ceiling. I can't really fix it cause it's right over my bed and I can't reach it.'
Him: 'So it's in your bedroom. I see ;)'
Me: 'No. No, you don't. It's a literal lamp in a literal ceiling, that just so happens to be in my bedroom. Once again: this is not a pickup line!'
Him: 'A dark bedroom is not always a bad thing ;)'
Me: 'IT'S NOT DARK! The lightbulb works perfectly! I just need someone to FIX MY LAMP!'
Aaaaaand so on and so forth. It took me a while to find someone who seemed to know what he was talking about and was ready to give it a try. I was a bit apprehensive when he asked me if I had a screwdriver (like, sure I do, bro, but a screwdriver ain't gonna help you here) but I was way too lazy to look any further and, given my aversion to any sort of social contact, I knew that if I waited too long I would never get anyone over to fix the lamp. Maybe that would have been for the best because I was literally letting a complete stranger into my apartment... on a Friday night... a stranger I found on tinder... I know how this sounds. I can already feel the judgement coming from the other side of the screen, but I figure that if I'm going to do dumb shit, I might as well do all of it before I hit 30. After that I'll try to be a normal, functional adult.
So, on a dark and stormy Friday night (for real, the weather was pretty awful that evening), I let Tinder-guy into my home. Did I feel good about it? Hell no, but I was confident in my ability to drive away any man away if need be (it seems to have worked so far). Now, Tinder-guy seemed like a nice guy, at first. Polite and respectful enough to make me think that maybe, just maybe, my ill-conceived plan had worked and I could finally get my lamp fixed. He didn't bring any tools (although I'd told him several times that he would need more than a screwdriver to fix things) so that made me a bit skeptical, but the kicker came when he saw my lamp and went: 'Oh... there really is a broken lamp? I thought it was a pickup line.'
Bitch... what?
I've heard guys complain that women are 'never clear about what they want' and that it's 'so difficult to understand them'. First of all: once you start talking in hyperbole, you're the real problem because you're basing your opinions on unfounded generalisations. And secondly: I was ABUNDANTLY clear about what I wanted: someone to FIX MY GODDAMN LAMP! I couldn't have made myself any more clear! I told Tinder-guy several times that I only needed to re-attach my lamp to the ceiling, nothing more. So maybe women aren't the problem here? Maybe some guys just don't know how to listen (or read). 'But, Grete, you were on tinder. What did you expect?' I hear you ask. I dunno, I guess I was expecting some BASIC LITERACY! Yeah, yeah, I understand the whole 'but tinder!' argument but I made it clear, several times, that there wouldn't be anything other than some lamp-fixing going on. There is no way I could have made my intentions any more clear without staging an elaborate musical number accompanied by an interpretive dance. And I didn't have the energy to set that up.
Tinder-guy did give it his best shot though. Sadly, his 'best shot' was an abysmal failure. He unscrewed some screws, lost one of them (still haven't found it), and then went about undoing what he'd done. All the while whining. 'How did you manage to achieve this? Were you hanging off your lamp or what?' Yeah, well, I needed something to grab on to while I was falling. Sue me! 'Why were you standing on pillows anyway?!' We went over this: bad planning. I didn't realise at the moment that I had better options. Shit happens. 'Why didn't you tell me that a piece of your ceiling has basically fallen off?' I dunno, didn't seem important at the time and I had a lot on my plate anyway. 'How do you not know how to fix this? How are you this inept?' Okay, that one pissed me off. How do I not know how to re-attach a lamp to the ceiling? Because I've NEVER HAD TO DO IT BEFORE!!! And I missed the secret 'lamp-lecture' everyone else apparently had as a kid or whatever. I also don't know sign language! Guess why! Because I've never had to use it before! I can assemble furniture, I know how to paint the walls of my apartment (and demolish the walls of someone else's), I know how to use a sander and I can build a freaking raft if need be - all because I've done those things before. I've NEVER had to attach a lamp to the ceiling! That's why I don't know how! And it takes a special kind of oblivious asshole to shame you for failing at a task while he is literally in the process of failing at the same task.
After about half an hour of listening to Tinder-guy whine about how poorly constructed my whole apartment was and worry about his well-being after seeing a meat-tenderiser on top of my wardrobe (nothing creepy about that, I just forgot it there after a Halloween party... several years ago), I realised that this was hopeless. He declared fixing my lamp situation to be 'Mission Impossible' and gave up, leaving me no other option but to throw him out as politely as I could. Needless to say that Tinder-guy was thoroughly shocked at this turn of events: he failed at the ONE task I gave him and I DIDN'T want to spend the rest of the night with him?! Madness! Meanwhile, I was very successful in removing him from my presence, so at least I had that going for me. My lamp was in worse shape than before though, missing a screw and all that, so I guess I can safely say that plan B failed as well.
I haven't gotten to plan C yet. I'm not sure what it is yet. Considering that my lamp has the magical ability to turn grown men into whiny little girls, I think I'm going to have to fix the thing on my own. If I have to listen to another lecture on my inability to succeed in the most mundane tasks without breaking everything in sight, someone's going to get hurt. Probably me. Probably emotionally. But someone is sure to get hurt. So, plan C is going to entail me borrowing a ladder, getting up close and personal with the lamp and fixing that little bastard like there's no tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I can do it, if I finally manage to get close enough to the ceiling. At least I know I won't be whining like a little bitch the whole time I'm trying. And if I can't, there's always plan D: summoning a demon from the pits of Hell to possess my lamp so it would fix itself. At least there are wikiHow guides on summoning demons so I'll have something to go on. And yes, I do realise how crazy it sounds to conjuring a malevolent spirit before summoning a physical, human handyman but that's just how cheap I am. Summoning a demon only costs you your soul and I barely have one left anyway.
Until I exhaust all of my options, or one of my plans works, I'm left with the evidence of my shameful failure staring right at me every morning I wake up and every night as I fall asleep. In a way, that broken lamp has become an apt metaphor for my life: a barely functional hot mess that's horrible to look at but somehow still works, despite everything. It might be kind of broken and missing a few pieces but at least it's mine and it does its job. Does it need fixing? Sure, of course it does. And the only person who can truly fix it is me. Or, like, a professional electrician or something...?
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