Irrelevant Cheetah

I’ve posted before – though I can’t be bothered to find the actual post (I can’t remember what I titled it) – about wanting to install an escape hatch in my bedroom. I can’t help thinking that not only would it increase the resale value of the house (“You see, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the previous owner had the foresight to install an escape hatch over here in the corner”) but it would also come in extremely handy in the event of a rabid water buffalo invasion.

However, the Wife has nixed the idea, so I’ve behaved myself.

But there’s something that’s bugged me about the house ever since we moved in to this place. There are two light switches on the wall in the master bedroom that are unmarked and don’t seem to do anything. We’ve switched them up and down multiple times, but when we couldn’t figure out what the result was, we decided to leave them the way we found them, so as not to mess with the status quo.

There are also two switches in the hallway near the furnace that also don’t seem to do anything. Again, we’ve tried different configurations, but eventually decided to leave them the way they were so as not to disturb anything.

Last night I had an epiphany: What if all four switches must be flipped up (or down) at the same time? Maybe that triggers the unknown result! Kind of like a failsafe for a nuclear detonation!

Today, of course, was the day to test my hypothesis.

Giggling like a schoolgirl in anticipation of the incredibly awesome results, I got suited up in preparation for The Event:

You can see the suspect switches in the bedroom behind me. Both switches in the hallway have already been flipped to the ‘up’ position.

As I said, I had no idea what would happen when I flipped those switches. They might send the house into warp drive. They might turn the master bathroom into cake. They might turn on the light outside by the back porch.

But damn the torpedoes – I was going in! Without further ado, I flipped the switches…

And nothing happened.

Without missing a beat, I reset. I flipped both switches in the hallway to the ‘down’ position, re-entered the bedroom, and flipped both of those down. Nothing continued to happen, so I trotted back down the hallway and set the left switch to ‘down’ and the right switch to ‘up.’

After trying all four switches in absolutely every possible combination, including a few that used imaginary numbers like √(-1) and eleventy-seven, I gave up. In essence, I wanted a really cool story, and I got zip. Zilch. Nada.

But I’m not going to do that to the next guy that owns this place. I’m going to wire up those switches to do something, darn it. And once he figures out how to activate the Super-Secret Light Switch Event, it’ll be awesome. It’ll totally be worth his time, and he won’t be getting snide comments like “Will you leave those switches alone?!” and “Dad! Is that Mom’s sauce pan?”

Lucky bastard.