The battery in one of our smoke alarms needed changing one night and so I went out and bought a new nine-volt battery (the small rectangular one with both the negative and positive poles at the same end) and prepared to fix up the little lifesaver on the ceiling.
However, as often happens, I got myself distracted at something else – probably refereeing a battle between our dog and cats or pausing to check my email at the sound of the ding – and so I slipped the battery into the pocket of my jeans and attended to whatever emergency had come up.
I walked around with battery in pocket for a while before remembering the important job that awaited. Reaching my hand into my pocket, I retrieved the little power producer only to feel my fingers burning at something scorchingly hot in my pants. Literally hot and not just sexy as per usual.
Basic instinct (ahem) took over and I quickly dropped my pants right there and then in the middle of the living room. Fortunately, my wife and kids were in bed asleep and so were not witness to the sudden private party I was apparently engaged in around midnight on this particular Wednesday.
My action may have been a bit rash but I have always lived by a policy which commands me to instantly remove my pants whenever they catch on fire. In this case, the garment hadn’t actually ignited but whatever had happened, there was far more than the normal amount of heat in the place where I usually keep only a few coins and the occasional jelly bean.
Coins, battery. Aha! I shook out my jeans and sure enough, out fell the battery followed by a few quarters.
Now, in one of the few times I can remember my high school education coming in handy, I was able to put two and two together. One or more of the coins had come to rest against the two battery poles, opening up a current. In a few minutes, the charge had raced around that battery and coins so rapidly that it not only heated up the whole affair, but completely drained the battery of its energy in the process.
I scooped up the battery with a plastic dustpan and flung it out into the garage. I checked it next day and as I thought it might be, it was completely spent. How ironic, I thought later, that I could have lost my life trying to repair the device that was designed to save it.
So the next time your friendly neighbourhood flasher drops his pants outside your picture window, check to see he doesn’t have a battery in his pocket before you call the cops.
©2016 Jim Hagarty
