I may not be the best at remembering song lyrics.
But I’m pretty sure it’s “When the lights…go down…in the shitty…”
Aaaaaaand….we’re back! After dropping a few posts about one particular day1Links to those 3 posts can be found here, here, and here. during the Crazy-Ass Summer of ’99, I figured it was time to resume my review of the beach house known as Eden Cove 9 (aka EC9).
Anne Frankly,2Yes, this is a punny reference to the illegal refugees who accompanied as to Oak Island, but whom I can never explicitly talk about. I’m so exhausted from trying to publicly catalog all the weird-ass things about EC9 and Better Beach Rentals, that I’m just going plagiarize myself in the last post with the following disclaimer:
“I assume you know what I’m going on about and jump right in to another round of idiosyncrasies from the 5 weeks my fam and I were refugees at this particular beach house.
In the off chance you are not familiar with good ol’ EC9, then you can catch up on what you missed here. Otherwise, let’s dive right on in…”
Level 6a: The Lighter Side Of Things
“No, Daddy, let me turn out the lights!” Oh, what a deceptively simple request…
We had just finished up bath time and it was time for our 3-year-old, aka The Younger, to head to her adjacently-located bedroom and wind down for the evening. Since she was smack-dab in the middle of her Let-Me-Assert-My-Own-Dang-Independence phase, I wasn’t surprised that she would be eager to turn out the bathroom lights all on her own. Naturally, I obliged and told her to have it.
She headed to the nearest bank of light switches–the ones right next to the tub (which you can almost see across the way in Figure 1), and flipped a few of them. The result? Well, kind of like “two steps forward, one step back,” it was “one more light on, but, hey, two lights off,” with the net result of it being slightly darker in the bathroom.
“Oh, it looks like you need to turn off the lights over there,” I gently encouraged her, pointing across the bathroom at the switches next to one of the awkwardly-positioned sinks.
Undeterred, she ambled over and started flipping the switches into the “off” position, but befell the same fate as before, turning on more lights than off.
“Hmmm, that’s odd…okay, try the switches over there.” I guess I hadn’t really noticed before that there was yet another bunch of switches next to the other sink.
But, nay, after trying every combination of switchery, she was still no closer to having shut the lightshow down. We were both becoming visibly discombobulated at that point.
“Son of a biscuit, seriously, how are the lights still on?!?”
At that point, I was starting to get a strong escape room vibe, and I was expecting some secret passage to open up once we got the exact right configuration of switch positions. Was this what it took to finally be able to access the elevator, maybe?!?
“Okay, kiddo, don’t give up–we can do this.”
You know, I never really thought I would ever be in the position where I would have to muster up so much fake optimism and encouragement to help my progeny successfully turn off the lights in a single room, but then again, EC9 was proving itself to be a never-ending cornucopia of WTF situations that simply should never occur in this dimension of reality.
I was in the middle of having such an inner dialogue with myself when I spotted yet a fourth ----- set of switches next to the shower.
…and that’s when I lost my sh*t, flying into a fit of rage as I rushed from one set to the next, violently flipping switches on and off, all teaching my child how to properly take the name of any and all Lords in vain.
I was so sick of this purgatory by now that I was eager to just move on to some form of hell itself–and with my little cursing spree, I’m pretty sure I guaranteed my seat in Hades, no matter which religion turns out to be the true one.
Anyways…I’m proud to say that after 5 minutes of tomfoolery, we finally had ourselves a dark bathroom.
Yes, that’s right: a grown-ass man just gave himself and his toddler a Hi-Five for successfully turning out the lights in a room.
Oh, sh*t. Wait just a minute! Did we just officially enter the TwiLight Zone?
Hmmph.
Well, if it is, it has to be the most boring episode ever…
Content created on: 27/28 August 2021 (Fri/Sat)
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