Batteries Not Included

At least I am good for something around here.

“Hey Dad!”.

Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash

This is the second night in a row the child has come back to me with big, big problems:

She’s out of power.

Last night she came down with a little led string light about 12 inches that she found - I don’t know where - and announced she needed batteries for it.

Back in the day the batteries I need were:

9 volts - for that old AM/FM radio you kept on stealing from your old man.
AA - because that’s what the walkmans needed.
D - for the boombox. “Portable” Music¹

Now? button batteries. All the toys come needing button batteries. It seems the power requirements for toys have come down since back in the day and now they run on these little things that the dog keeps mistaking for dog treats.

Anyway, this little string light - it needed some AR13 batteries. But, I I am getting ahead of myself - first let me tell you how freaking small the text is on a small battery the size of the top of the child’s pinkie. Even my one good eye let me down. I was about to go find my magnifying glass when the child took over: “Dad, it says AR13”.

Okay then. I pulled out all the little batteries and at first I didn’t think we had any but lo and behold I found some. You would think that we won the lottery.

It took me about 10 minutes to wrestle 3 tiny batteries that are supposed to contact each other and somehow stay between 2 springs without the middle one popping out and having us play “where did it go?” for much longer than I would have liked.

It popped, we played, I may have said bad words.

There. string light working, and the child bounced upstairs to decorate her nest made of blankets and squishmallows and unicorn dust² under her desk in the room.

I didn’t see her for the rest of the night.

Until Next Time,

TH and Co.

1. for about an hour - and then you were out the six bucks or so because you filled this monster with 18 D sized batteries.

2. and dog hair - always the dog hair.