Once Upon a Tiny Light Switch

Dedication: to Patrick, Sydney, Sydney's mom, and to a discovery that discovered us.

Once upon a time, there was a tiny light switch. There was very little known about the tiny light switch. The only three things known with certainty about the tiny light switch is that it was tiny, it was a light switch, and only three things were known about it.

It was said to be buried somewhere deep in the bosom of Baltimore. Men, women, and children from all across the globe heard this, and began to build ships of the most robust wood, so they could set sail to the virgin shores in hopes of finding the tiny light switch. As more people landed on the city’s jagged coastline, a rumor began to spread about the tiny light switch—that anyone who touched it would find themselves with the power of the tiny light switch. No one knew what the power was, but they came in droves, drawn to the idea of attaining new power. However, there was also supposed to be a catch—one too perfect not to be true—that anyone who touched it would become tiny just like the light switch.

For this reason, only the most humble searched with zeal, because it was only the most humble that were untroubled by the chance of being made tiny. The proud and the arrogant continued to come, but were only motivated by the veneration they thought might accompany their discovery of the tiny light switch. This reason alone was never enough to provide lasting resolve in their search. Therefore, the proud and the arrogant would spend a day or two looking hastily for the tiny light switch, but would quickly give up and instead start to cast nets into the untapped waters of the harbor. When they did, they found the waters were teeming with delicious red crabs. They would catch the delicious red crabs and sell them, in order to have means of adding to their pride and their arrogance.

After centuries of futile pursuit, the proud and the arrogant came to vastly outnumber the humble, and the people slowly began to forget about the tiny light switch. The search for the tiny light switch began to fade into the bright glow of the growing city. The resilient few who refused to give up on finding the tiny light switch were reliably ousted to the outskirts of the city, cast aside by the proud and the arrogant and left to toil hopelessly in their own humility. The jettisoned humble were sure the tiny light switch must lie somewhere within the neighborhoods occupied by the proud and arrogant, but they weren’t let back in to see for themselves.

At the same time, more and more crab shops began to rise on the downtown city blocks, as more and more people began to abandon hopes of finding the tiny light switch, and with it abandon their faith in a life of humility. Soon, some of those crab shops turned into crab factories. Then those crab factories began to realize people everywhere wanted their delicious red crabs, so they began to build big ships out of the hardest steel to carry the delicious red crabs all over the world, so they could sell them in new places and continue to add to their pride and their arrogance. The city became so caught up with its bustling business and other bits of balderdash; it couldn’t be distracted by something so tiny like the tiny light switch.

Once every few years, a determined, but humble man, woman, or child would wash up on the docks of Charm City, probing for the ever illusive, tiny light switch. Hope would temporarily be restored by this new infusion of humble fervor, but all were ultimately left defeated to a life of irrelevance, or worse, converted to a life of pride and arrogance.

The tiny light switch was beginning to grow in its own desolation, watching humility desolate into pride and arrogance. People of all different colors came, speaking all different languages, wearing all different kinds of clothes, but it always ended the same. The tiny light switch grew sad. It started to grow weary from its isolation. All it wanted was for someone to look in the right place, and to find the tiny light switch.

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On Saturday, March 29th, 2015—by some miracle as blessed as the tiny light switch itself—we found it. We found the tiny light switch, and we weren’t even looking for it. In fact, up until the moment we found it, we never knew the tiny light switch existed.

I wish you could see it for yourself. It is beautiful, like a newborn child lying naked in the snow. It shares all the same features as a regular light switch, but is much, much tinier. You could probably fit 60 of these tiny light switches within the area occupied by one regularly sized light switch. It is that tiny. For the sake of a more complete visual, it is not the kind of light switch that looks like a miniature gun pointing at your head when it’s on and your knees when it’s off. It’s not this kind of light switch. It is the kind of light switch composed of two ramps with very subtle slopes that meet in the middle. The kind of light switch that looks like no more than a vertically oriented rectangle if you move far enough away, but with one half of the rectangle a slightly darker shade than the other, because of the way the light and angles interact. It was this latter kind of light switch, but extra tiny.

The tiny light switch was prudently placed in a room on the third floor of the Fairfield Inn and Suites, the hotel at the corner of Lombard and President, which watches with regal eyes over all the crab factories and steel ships of the Inner Harbor. When we made the tiny discovery, we couldn’t help but gather around it, like children gather around a fire. We cooled our warm skin with its cold touch. We held our thumbs up against the tiny light switch. We considered the possibility that maybe everything else in the room was too big, and maybe the tiny light switch wasn’t really tiny at all. Maybe it was the only thing in the room that was just the right size.

We flipped the tiny light switch back and forth between the only two positions it knew how to hold. We stayed the same size when we touched it. We also found it turned on a lamp—but not a tiny lamp, just a normally-sized lamp. This tiny light switch turned on a normally-sized lamp. We stared at the tiny light switch, and we giggled at it. We giggled at the revelation that the tiny light switch turned on a normally-sized lamp.

It all felt right—to be taken to a special place by the sight and workings of this tiny light switch. In the moment, I never thought to question our wonder; I just enjoyed its sensations. It wasn’t until later that I couldn’t help but think about why we were so drawn to the tiny light switch.

I think we may have seen a little bit of ourselves in that tiny light switch.

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I’ll admit the conclusion above is laden in contrivance. I promised my co-discoverers I would write a piece about the tiny light switch, so I racked my brain in the hopes of finding meaning in something that may not have meaning. It took me a long time to think up anything that may prove worth writing about. I sat there, eyes fixed on the ceiling light overhead, hoping its illumination might serve as a beacon to something profound. I am not convinced it has.

But maybe it has. Maybe all I really have to do is attribute meaning in order for something to have meaning. Maybe I have that power. Sure, I just invented the meaning now, but maybe this doesn’t mean the meaning wasn’t always there. Maybe the meaning lay latent somewhere in the white plastic of that tiny light switch, just waiting to be discovered and freed and brought to life—in accord with the legend of the tiny light switch.

With the secrets of my writing process now adequately aired, I still can’t bury the sense that there might be some truth in my conclusion: I think we may have seen a little of ourselves in that tiny light switch. What other reason could there be for our fascination with the tiny light switch? I love things that remind me of myself. It’s why I hang out with like-minded people. It’s why I watch movies. In a less direct way, it’s why I get uncomfortable when I see someone indiscreetly scratch himself in public. And it’s probably why we loved the tiny light switch. In it, we saw a little of ourselves.

Baltimore is a place with big problems. So is the world, come to think of it. Baltimore is a little different though, because even the most aloof cannot help but become aware of the problems. Baltimore is something like a microcosm of all the big problems. They are magnified by centuries of pride and arrogance and are thrown into your face as you try to walk serenely up and down the beaten asphalt of its streets.

And compared to the problems, we are so very tiny. Especially when we measure ourselves against the beasts of history, society, bureaucracy—which we cannot help but do. When we measure ourselves against anything but ourselves, we are left defeated, ready to submit to the ferocity and grandeur of the problems. Ready to think humility doesn’t work, and that pride and arrogance might.

When we look at the tiny light switch, we see a little of ourselves. We realize how good we are. We realize it is a wonderful thing to be humble. We realize we are tiny, but we realize how much power we really have. That is why we giggle and stare. That is why we are drawn to the tiny light switch. We realize that no matter how tiny the light switch, it still has all the right stuff to turn things on and off. A tiny light switch can provide just the same amount of light as a regular light switch, or a giant light switch, and it can provide a hell of a lot more light than a net full of crabs.

Happy Maundy Thursday!

#baltimore