one small thing

It was but one small thing, one simple step not taken, that caused the big battery to drain. It started with d-cell batteries, themselves a few decades old, that I was trying to charge for the first time in their lives, so as to use them in a lamp, for reading; the d-cells, even after sitting in the charger for nine hours, had not retained any charge, providing not even trace illumination. Conceding defeat, I had dutifully unplugged the charger from the extension cord that runs to the 750-watt inverter in the basement, which is connected via alligator clamps to the big battery, a 12 volt deep-cycle marine type.

The reason that the marine deep-cycle exhibited a diminished charge compared to if it had simply sat there not providing power to anything was that I had forgotten to turn off the inverter when done using it; therefore, the little green LED light that burns when the inverter is turned on had slowly whittled away at the big battery's charge, over twelve hours chewing up a couple of amperes. One small thing overlooked, one simple step not taken, had impacted demonstrably, using up less electricity than I had originally feared, however, for after turning off the DC-to-AC inverter, the big battery's charge jumped back up almost all the way back to where it would have been had I not been such a fool. Had it not been for the post-booze haze which moved in Saturday morning and hung on tenaciously all day, I might have remembered to depress that one small button, thus saving myself a bit of consternation, but, ah well, the past cannot be changed, while the future is pregnant with smarter decisions, better made. Huzzah.

And so, I shall hazard to declare, it goes with many things in life – the small and easily-overlooked, if they are indeed viewed as small, if indeed they are overlooked, quickly turn into things of tremendous import, wreaking havoc if allowed to grow from tiny saplings into towering trees. It is for me, then, to remember to attend to the small beginnings of things, and to stay with them, patiently, until they have reached their natural end. In this fashion, then, I might actually make something of this pathetic life of mine. Mahalo.

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