Lesson Two: Ballast Blues

             The sun rose in the East with a beautiful pinkish hue.  A smattering of clouds drifted lazily overhead, and Jon Mopp strolled casually into his custodial office after having picked up his mail and notes from others throughout the building.  Stretching and reaching for his cup of coffee, Jon missed and a dark brown lake grew in size on his desk, slowly engulfing his mail, notes and desk calendar.  Quickly grabbing a handful of paper towels, Jon tried to blot up as much as possible.  Peeling the wet papers off of his desk, Jon set them aside to dry.  After cleaning up his mess, Jon began to look through his notes, some wet, others dry.  He glanced at the clock; it read 8:00 a.m. 

            “Please change the lights in the Art room.  They are the ones flickering directly over the sink,” one note read. 

            “Good,” thought Jon.  “I like an easy job like that.”

            After sorting through a few more notes, making a couple of phone calls, and re-filling his coffee cup, Jon went into the storage room and grabbed a couple of fluorescent bulbs.  Putting an aluminum ladder over his right shoulder, holding his coffee in his right hand and carrying the bulbs in his left, Jon headed for the Art room. 

            Looking somewhat like Steve Martin carrying his chairs down the street in the movie “The Jerk,” Jon eventually arrived at his destination.  Carefully setting down his coffee so as not to spill anything again, Jon opened the door.  Stepping inside, he set down the bulbs, the ladder and then retrieved his coffee.

            Jon turned on the overhead lights.  Sure enough, right over the sink the fluorescent bulbs hummed, flickered and buzzed, indicating the end of their life.  Jon got right to work.  He didn’t want to be in the middle of a project when the students came in to class, so the quicker he could get this job done, the better. 

            Having learned his lesson with ladders, Jon carefully set up his aluminum ladder next to the sink and directly under the dying lights.  He climbed up the ladder, being careful not to pass the “DO NOT STAND ON OR ABOVE” sticker on the penultimate rung.  Jon reached overhead, unlatched both clips on the side of the light cover, and carefully opened it. 

            Sputtering and blinking like an old neon sign outside a hotel window, the bulbs were definitely in need of attention.  Jon carefully reached up to remove the flickering tubes.  As he went to pull out one of the bulbs, the electrical connectors on the end of the cap bumped against the metal casing of the light fixture and a loud cracking and snapping rang out in Jon’s ears.  Immediately aware of the short circuit he had created, Jon desperately tried to re-install the bulb into the fixture.  Hands sweating and worried that he’d be electrocuted, Jon fumbled with the tube as it defied his attempts at replacement.  As he was just about to re-insert the bulb, the other end slipped out of the fixture and out of his hands and tumbled to the floor where an audible “pop” was heard and a cloud of white powder billowed up around Jon’s legs.

           

            Mumbling to himself, Jon climbed down off of the ladder.  Crunching glass snapped under his feet.  Jon walked over to the light switch and turned off the lights.  The morning sunshine illuminated the room enough for him to see what he was doing, so he climbed back up the ladder and removed the second bulb.  He then proceeded to put the two new bulbs he had brought with him into the sockets.  Having accomplished this without any setbacks, Jon went over and turned on the light switch.  To his chagrin, the bulbs only flickered.

            Jon stood there muttering to himself.  Carefully and thoughtfully pondering his situation, Jon came to realize that he probably needed to change the ballast.  This was not what he wanted to do, especially since he wasn’t a real friend of electricity anyway.  However, being the obedient custodian that he was, he set out to accomplish this task. 

            After climbing the ladder for the fourth time, Jon again carefully removed the bulbs.  Climbing down, Jon leaned the bulbs against the wall and climbed the ladder again.  He squeezed the center cover together and removed it.  Carefully moving the wires around, Jon was able to make out the brand and type of ballast he would need.  He then descended the ladder and went to his office to get one.

            Returning a few minutes later, Jon was prepared.  He had a new ballast, wire cutters, wire nuts, a socket and ratchet and an electrical tester.  He was set.  Jon again climbed the ladder.  Carefully keeping his tools either in his pocket or on top of the ladder, he began to cut the wires on the ballast.  He then carefully unscrewed the ballast from the fixture and set it on top of the ladder.  Picking up the new ballast, Jon screwed it into place inside the fixture.  He then began stripping wires.  As the wires were stripped, Jon would let them dangle from the light while he worked on the next one.  Unaware or just plain stupid, Jon had NOT turned off the circuit breaker when he started.  He figured as long as he didn’t complete the circuit himself, and didn’t short any wires together, he’d be fine.  However, unbeknownst to him, the white and black wires were just millimeters from each other.

            Excited electrons surging through the circuit were just looking for a way to continue their journey, and the close proximity of the two wires was just too tempting.  With a loud “pop” and “snap,” the black and white wires bumped each other and then bounced apart.  Jon, startled by this, dropped his wire cutters to the floor and knocked the ballast off the ladder.  Tumbling from rung to rung, the ballast made its’ way to the floor where it landed with a thud.  The thud came from the shear weight of the ballast.  It was an old one, very heavy and filled with oil.  It probably had been made in the early ‘50’s.  Since the ballast was ancient, it was worn and fragile.  The impact on the ladder and floor caused a small crack to appear in the side of the ballast, and within seconds, a small trickle of PCB filled oil began to ooze onto the floor. 

            “Dang it!” yelled Jon.

            Preparing to scurry down the ladder and clean up the contaminate quickly, Jon leaned down to grab the sides of the ladder.  In so doing, his head bumped into the black wire.  Reaching up to move it, Jon inadvertently grabbed the white wire.  Electrons raced through Jon’s head, circled his eye socket, traveled at lightning speed down his nose and across his lips, made its way across his neck, over his shoulder and back up his arm to emerge from the tip of his index finger which was in contact with the white wire. 

Feeling as if his skin were crawling with thousands of tiny, excited worms, Jon screamed out in pain.  Letting go of the wire before his muscles contracted to the point where he wouldn’t be able to let go, Jon lost his balance and the ladder tipped over backwards.

            As Jon rode the ladder to the floor, the front legs of the ladder headed skyward.  As if in perfection unison, both legs bumped the black and white wires at the same time.  Jon was effectively thrown from the ladder as electricity surged through the aluminum.  At the same time, the electricity, which had raced through this ideal medium, continued its journey into a pile of paint saturated papers into which the ladder fell.  With a loud “woof” the entire pile of 8 x 10 second grade self-portraits burst into flames.  The flashover from this ignition engulfed Jon’s head singeing the hair on his face and scalp.  Looking as if he’d just had a perm, his eyes encircled by dark smoky rings, and smoke curling up from his eyebrows, Jon jumped to his feet as if he’d just landed on a tin roof in the middle of a 100 degree summer. 

            Kicking the ladder away from the wires, Jon stopped the flow of electrons through the aluminum. Grabbing a nearby fire extinguisher, Jon began to put out the fire.  Meanwhile, overhead, the wires continued to dangle.  As they did so, they were close enough to once again meet, and did so.  With a loud “bang,” the wires effectively welded themselves together.  At the same time, the wires began to melt, which in turn started them on fire.  Panic-stricken, Jon turned the fire extinguisher on the fire overhead.  Not realizing that this extinguisher was water, Jon again completed the circuit as the water hit the electrical fire.  Screaming in pain again, Jon’s pants zipper welded itself together as the electricity raced to ground.  His shoes instantly popped and two large holes appeared in his day old Nike’s. 

            By now, Jon’s contracting muscles had squeezed the extinguisher from his grip and it fell to the floor rolling over and over toward the opposite wall.  With a crash, it hit the shelf containing the paint supply for the class and the bottles crashed to the floor, some of them breaking open and creating a beautiful rainbow on the tile. 

            By now, the circuit breaker had finally popped, and the electricity had stopped flowing.  Smoke still roiled up from the pile of paintings in the corner.  The cupboards overhead were dark with soot, and a painting on the wall of President Lincoln now looked like Martin Luther King Jr. 

            Jon, shaken, hurting and totally upset with himself, looked around the room at the mess.  He had less than 45 minutes to get things cleaned up before class started.  Jon’s muscles were throbbing, his head hurt, his arm felt numb, and his body in general was racked with pain.  Realizing he needed to get this cleaned up now, he turned toward the door and stepped into the PCB contaminated oil, which somehow had managed to avoid being caught in the conflagration moments ago, and slipped.  Both feet going out from underneath him, Jon felt as if he were in slow motion as he fell to the floor landing on his back.  An audible “crunch” could be heard as his spine made contact with the tile covered concrete slab underneath.  Jon moaned in pain, unable to move for several minutes.  Eventually, he was able to slowly lift himself off of the ground as if someone was peeling a label slowly off of a jar, and he sat up.  Pain pulsing through his back and body, Jon carefully rose to his feet like a zombie from the grave and walked to the door.  Reaching for the knob, he bumped the bulbs which had been leaning against the wall, and with a crash, they hit the floor and shattered.  A billowy cloud of white powder engulfed Jon and entered Jon’s shoes through the newly created holes filling them with fluorescent light powder.  Looking like a flour covered baker, he turned the knob and slowly walked down the hall toward his office cursing and swearing under his breath.  Jon knew it would be awhile before he was feeling like himself again. 

            After spending another 40 minutes cleaning up the disaster, Jon was back to square one.  He looked up at the open light fixture.  Getting permission from the teacher to finish the project while she started class, Jon first went and made sure the breaker was off.  Then he came back and carefully re-wired the new ballast.  Putting everything back together, he was ready to insert the new bulbs.   He did so without incident.  He climbed down the ladder, went to the circuit breaker box and reset the breaker.  Then, returning to the room, Jon flipped on the light switch.  The bulbs both flickered as if crawling with glow-in-the-dark bugs.  He waited.  They continued to flicker and flicker and flicker. 

            “Enough!” Jon said.  “I’ll work on it some other time.”  Turning to walk out the door, Jon turned the handle, opened it and walked into the edge of the door as it bounced off of his shoe.  A large welt appeared directly down the middle of his face.  Without looking back, Jon drug himself to his office.  Entering his office and in pain, he looked up at the clock through swollen eyes and a throbbing head.  The time was 9:05 a.m.  Jon’s day had barely begun.