Charging

The Household of No has reached a milestone: we now have more gadgets that require charging than we do actual available electrical outlets.

Our house was built in the early 1980's, when most people only had one telephone unless you were a kind and gracious parent who loved your teenagers enough to get them their own land line, and then you had two telephones.  My parents chose not to spring for that second line, which meant that I had to have those top secret gushing about cute boys and complaining about the parents' unfair rules sessions with my BFF's while sitting on the floor in the pantry, staring at canned peas and flour and kitchen appliances that the Grandma of No hid in there, probably so that the neighbors wouldn't think she had a cluttered kitchen.

It likely never occurred to whoever built our house that one day outlet needs would move beyond a television, a microwave, and a toaster. 

Now everyone in my house has a phone of their very own. We have iPads and e-readers and rechargeable batteries for digital cameras and handheld game devices and every single one of these items has to be charged, and of course they all have to be charged at the same time, which would be 9:30 PM on Sunday night right after everyone in the house has finished watching The Walking Dead and we all realize at the exact same time that all of our devices need to connect to a power source before we go to bed in preparation for Monday.

My kids even have arguments about chargers.  My brother and I had our share of sibling conflict, but we never fought over whose iPad charger was plugged in by the sofa in the living room.

I should have anticipated this crisis a few years ago when I was traveling for work and ended up in a hotel room that had two available outlet plugs for my use. I had a laptop, a cell phone, an e-reader, and a digital camera, all of which needed to be charged.  I made the mistake of unplugging the only light in the room that was turned on so that I could use its outlet, and immediately stubbed my big toe on a piece of furniture that had decided to move while the lights were out.  The next day I was limping around in pain. One of my co-workers noticed and asked why I was hobbling around.

I was trying to find an outlet to charge my phone and I think I broke my toe, I told him.  He just nodded and made no further comment.

I have a box in one of my kitchen cabinets that has extra charger cords. I would be willing to bet that some of them probably go to devices that we no longer actually have. It seems to be some cosmic universal rule that every device has to have its own specific charger, and they seem to break rather easily.  One day in the distant future, alien archaeologists from a neighboring galaxy will be conducting a dig where my house once stood; they will find these charger cords and be perplexed.

At least this is a problem that will be solved with time; in less than two years the Teenager will be moving out and taking about a third of all these electronic devices with her.  I just hope the dorm room she moves into has more than four electrical outlets.  It will be a good opportunity to practice some negotiating skills with a roommate.