Let There Be Light by Sharon O’Donnell

Eureka, I have found it! After 25 years of struggling to plug in cords behind furniture to put up lights in our house for Christmas, I have discovered the answer to my prayers. For the candles in the windows, I finally splurged and bought individual automatic timers for each one, meaning that once they are plugged in, that’s all I have to do. Usually, we spend all the time putting all the lights out, but then it is such a chore we never make sure we turn them all on each night. If the lights are there, they might as well be used, right? Sure, the battery-operated timers cost $7.50 a piece, but that’s a small price to pay to get to enjoy the lights instead of considering it all just a chore.

But the real icing on the cake was an indoor remote that enabled me to plug several items into one outlet and then simply point a remote at each item and push the respective button for that item’s outlet on the remote and — voila! Instant lights. I must admit it is like a new toy for me, as I click the lights off and on at random just because I CAN. It’s so easy! I would gladly do the commercial for this product, so Westinghouse, please contact me.

One should not derive such giddiness from clicking lights off and on. It just goes to show what a monumental, dreaded task this light-turning-on chore has been for me for the past quarter of a century. After playing around with the remote for a few hours, I went right out and bought one for my mother and presented it to her like it was the Holy Grail. Now all the lights in the windows of her sun room come on with a simple point and click.

One thing does bother me, though: I’m not quite sure what happens if we should lose the remote. And I don’t want to find out. I might even suffer from withdrawal symptoms. At the rate we lose things around our house, there is a very real possibility that the remote will be misplaced at least once during the holiday season. Until then . . . let there be light.