Sara was in total nesting mode. She was non-stop trying to get things in order, so that our rushed disaster of a house would be ready by Christmas, which was now three days away. I left for work that morning with the house in total disarray, and came home to a heart-warming suprise. I walked in and the entire living room and kitchen were unpacked and set up. We wouldn't have to eat anymore take out, and I could sit and watch TV and relax, theoretically. The best part is that, she had taken down our Christmas Tree at the apartment we had just moved out of, and set it up completely at our new address.
I am a Christmas junkie. Seeing the tree set up and decorated in our new apartment softened my hardened, stressed out heart and made me focus on happy thoughts. It was nice. The washer had broken sometime during the day, but I was desensitized to it. I wrote it off as okay because a broken washer is the sort of thing you could actually expect out of a new rental. I think just the sight of the christmas tree made it okay.
With a new outlook on things, thanks to a home-cooked meal and holiday cheer, we started making our home more homey. My pregnant wife got the idea to change a few switch plate covers. She changed the one on the light switch, because the old one had more switch plate holes than switches, which looked awful and trashy. Also, you could see the guts of the switch, god forbid Johnny stuck his finger in it. Then right before she started on the next one, I told her that I would do it. Quite honestly I was very uncomfortable with my wife (unborn child in tow) playing with anything related to the electrical components of an 1800s house.
The outlet was not your usual outlet. It looked to be an ancient version of a high voltage air conditioner outlet. It was big and circular with three weird holes around the border. The thought of my son crawling around with it exposed frightened me. I was going to put solid plate over it, closing it off.
I did not go to electrician school, but I knew enough to know that there was little risk of shock, if any, by changing a switch plate. The switch plate is not part of the electrical circuit of any electrical outlet. In this case, I was dreadfully wrong. I unscrewed the first screw on the plate. No problem. I unscrewed the second screw. Then, I went to grab the screw so it wouldn't fall. When I touched the screw, which had been right there sticking out of the bottom of the switch plate since we had moved in, blue electrical fire shot out from where my fingers had made contact. Immediately I felt almost stuck to it. Blue sparks and flame was all I could see. It was happening in slow motion. I jumped back, smoke billowing from the tips of my fingers.
The entire apartment smelled of current and charred flesh. A metallic, electrical taste permeated my senses. Burnt flesh smells terrible. I got up. Moving quickly across the room, shaking my arm around. Sara and my brother-in-law Chris were staring at me, a terrified expression etched on both of their faces. They asked me questions, I can't tell you any of my answers. Sara pointed down at my arm. It was twitching and shaking a little, involuntarily. My thumb and forefinger were charred completely black. It looked terrible. Looking at my mangled hand, I feared that both of the fingers were fried crispy.
I called the landlord to inform her that there was something seriously wrong with the electrical in her building, being as the screw that kept the switch plate over the outlet was also part of a live circuit. I was probably a little rude about the situation, not suprisingly. Then, I was off to the hospital. The fingers throbbed, not with pain but with an odd feeling.
My brother-in-law stayed at the death trap house with a sleeping Johnny, while Sara drove me to the hospital. I won't get into it too much, but I will tell you two highlights. First, scrubbing a burn with a bristle brush makes you see white with pain. Second, if I was left-handed the current could have travelled up to my heart and given me a heart attack. I got back from the hospital at about three in the morning. Now your playing with power. I spent the next four weeks bandaged up.
I woke up the next morning to a phone call. It was the landlord's attorney. Smelling a lawsuit as much as I had smelled my own flesh burning the previous night, Cruella De Vil had called her attorney for damage control. The attorney, who seemed rather nice, explained to me that the house had issues and that apparently it had been unspoken that repairs on the house were expected to be performed by the tenant at the cost of the tenant. "Well, that would have been nice to know beforehand, because I would have never moved into this hellhole if I had." I replied. He then intimated to me that he felt his client had rather naively gotten into this and thought she had handled everything very foolishly.
He babbled a little more, then got to the point, if I was uncomfortable with the arrangement, perhaps it'd be better if I moved on. "Quite honestly, I don't want to spend another moment here, my only concern is my security deposit and first month's rent." I replied. "I will make sure you get that money back, if that suits you." the attorney stated. "Also, I now need to find a place to live two days before Christmas, tell your client thank you very much for ruining my family's Christmas." I said somberly before hanging up.
The electrician who came to check out the outlet found out that the outlet was actually on a different circuit from everything else in our house. The circuit breaker was actually in our awful neighbors unit, which I am sure is up to code. I called our previous landlord, being as I had not yet handed over the keys to our place, and asked if we could move back into our old place. He had luckily not rented it out yet, so at least we had somewhere to go. Friends of mine were already telling me how I should definitely sue Cruella. Honestly it was tempting, but I also felt partly to blame. In hindsight, I knew I should have known it was a bad idea. We had been desperate and in a hurry. Two things you should never be when shopping for a house or an apartment.
We had wasted lots of time and effort. Three nights of moving and unpacking, cleaning, putting up blinds, which I would now be returning. The most demoralizing things was taking down the christmas tree and moving it again. Thank God the tree was fake, or we would have worn it down to kindling otherwise. Not to mention, two of my fingers were in full-on burn dressing and bandages.
Thanks to an email to some very awesome friends, within a day we had a lot of moving help, and we were back in our old apartment by Christmas Eve day. Granted, we had our Christmas among boxes, but at least we were out of that God foresaken place. Cleaning up the evil apartment I was tempted to vandalize it, until I remembered I was still waiting to get my security deposit back. We were going away shortly after Christmas so I had to harrass the De Vil's attorney to get my check quickly, but I got all of my money back. Luckily the electrical burn healed completely, with no nerve damage. There are no real signs of it anymore, the scar healed well.
Two months later, we found our current apartment and moved in with a little time to spare to get ready for the baby. Needless to say, we were much more thorough in looking for apartments from that day forward. We even used a realtor. My second son, Tommy was born on April Fools Day and luckily he never had to directly deal with that hellacious experience. Hopefully Johnny doesn't remember anything about the place either. Looking at pictures a year or two later, I noticed that both Sara and I look noticeably older in photos taken days before the moving debacle versus pictures taken during Christmas time of that year. I still wake up in a full panic from bad dreams of being electrocuted. I also developed a not so healthy fear of electricity from that day forward.
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