You light up my life

I attended a post-Christmas party recently and an old girl friend whom I hadn’t seen in years and who had taken the seat next to me asked, “What was the best Christmas present you received this year?” 

“A flashlight from Jopy!” I shot right back at her with all the excitement that the thought of flashlights brings to my life — for real! “It’s a nanolight that’s no bigger than my thumb and so, so powerful. It has a key ring that I can snap on to my purse with a zipper pull!”

You should have seen her face — “stunned” doesn’t quite do it justice. She was an arm’s length away from me and she looked like I had morphed into an alien with a gargantuan fetal head and multiple limbs.   

“That’s funny,” she managed to say through a smirk that had stretched her lips taut.

“I wasn’t kidding,” I told her. 

She shifted in her seat and then turned away to speak to the person across the table.

I’m used to unfavorable reactions of the sort from men and women alike — close friends even — every time I happen to mention that I have this “thing” for flashlights. I have learned to withhold such information until the last possible moment especially to people whom I would like to keep in my life for fear for scaring them away with this “weird” factoid about myself. 

Not all confessions about this matter always turn out regrettable, fortunately. Several have proved fruitful, with a couple of (obviously) male friends having been tickled pink that we shared the same passion, so much so that I have some bounty of rare finds to show for it. There’s the US Navy Seals standard issue submersible flashlight, and the British SAS, and Israeli Mossad counterparts from one man who, obviously, was very much into all things military and covert. He preached: “Men love flashlights. It’s our modern-day torch and thus resonates with our inner caveman.” 

It also happens to tap into men’s inner Sherlock Holmes, I might add. They all seem to enjoy patrolling the streets of perfectly secured residential villages at night after a hearty dinner shining their guy gear and miming a hunt for bad guys lurking in the shadows — their idea of living on the edge, you know.

Then there’s the collection of various lengths of the popular Maglite courtesy of (duh!) a Maglite fanatic, who made a career out of boasting that the Maglite — coated in anodized 6061 aluminum and featuring an ingenious variable-focus beam — is the single most ingenious American invention and America’s best gift to mankind. He was the one who said, “A man’s flashlight must be well-made, long-lasting, tough, reliable, and bright as hell. Some plastic, cheapo torch that barely illuminates the hand in front of your face simply won’t do. That’s why Maglites come highly recommended. They’re bright yet energy-efficient and their sturdy aluminum case allows them to double as batons. Blind the bad guys before clubbing them over the head. So it’s a Maglite or bust any day!” I urged him to call the Maglite Corporation and offer that clever tagline for money but he never got to it, I guess.

Then there was this flashlight über-aficionado who literally lit up my life with dozens of specimens of this “guy gear” — the more powerful, the better. He was the one who gave me a crash course on lumens. “The light that a flashlight puts out is measured in ‘lumens.’ A lumen is a measure of how much light is produced by a light source (originally a single candle),” he said.  To give me some perspective he added, “A 50-watt bulb has about 540 lumens. A 60-watt bulb has about 850 lumens. The typical cheap flashlight that you buy from the grocery store only has around 30 to 60 lumens. They’re not powerful and if it’s truly dark out, they’re not going to help you much at all.” 

 He taught me about the merits of incandescent versus LED bulbs: LEDs use only one sixth the power of incandescent lights and unlike fluorescent and CFLs, LEDs contain no mercury; rechargeable versus conventional batteries; hard-anodized cases versus not; with O-ring versus the bezel-only type; replaceable lithium battery versus cell coin battery powered with lithium giving up to five days of continuous light and weighing only as much as a quarter; aircraft grade aluminum versus plastic case for durability; ultraviolet versus not; tactical versus civilian and on and on. He continued: “Pay attention: flashlights have come a long way since the days of the cheap plastic-cased battery-eaters with short-range dim beams. Technology has made its way down to what used to be mundane gadgets. The result is some incredible and innovative flashlights that really change the entire spectrum of use, making them more practical and effective than ever.”

I know women are not supposed to have any affinity with flashlights at all; they’re right up there in the “strictly for men only zone where trespassers shall be dismembered” with power tools such as chainsaws and electric drills, but I can’t help it.  There’s something about them — I don’t know what exactly — that grabs my fancy. It might be because of the sense of security they provide in the knowing that I do have them when I need them. It could be because they make me feel macho and all-powerful — they awaken my inner Nancy Drew, what with that blinding beam that lights up one’s path at the flick of a switch. Maybe it’s because I grew up with a father and brothers who couldn’t have enough of them and left several lying around the house for those “just in case” situations they enumerated to Mom in justifying the aesthetic damage those “ugly man-gadgets” did to her idea of coherent interior design. 

I remember my mother saying a long time ago, “Men want flashlights in every room to make sure they are always handy, always nearby. The problem is they can never find them when the need arises; they forget where they put them.” 

The tattle tale that I was as a child, I told my father this to which he said, “True, maybe… but not because we forget where we put them. It’s because the women of the house always take them, move them around, and never put them back in their proper place.” That’s how I learned about sexual politics at an early age — courtesy of the trusty flashlight.

A grand uncle, knowing of my flashlight fetish, enlightened me on the similar if not more intense relationship men have with this guy gadget. “Life does get predictable and boring so the feel of something heavy in our hand with the power to illuminate the landscape and maim an imagined intruder gives us all the adventure we need in the relative safety of our rooms. In other words, we like to spook ourselves. But don’t tell any man I said that; say my wife said it.” 

I was researching the subject of flashlights on the Internet and stumbled across this interesting pie chart on the use of flashlights at www.artofmanliness.com. It illustrated that 78 percent of men believe flashlights are for playing pretend light saber games; 20 percent believe that they are used for making scary faces in the dark; and a mere two percent believe that they are actually used for the purpose for which they were invented — to light up the dark. And yes, it was a survey of full-grown, adult men; not children — or are those two terms synonymous?

There was a forum that succeeded the pie chart illustration and the more interesting comments from — again — grown men were: “Don’t forget, flashlights are for blinding people too.”  Another one said, “It’s a great storage space for dead batteries.” And yet another smart dude said, “Hey, it’s a great bludgeoning implement.”

My collection of flashlights has since swollen. But from the serious, function-oriented collector’s phase I once was in, my disposition has now turned toward the fun, quirky pieces courtesy of a new-found friend who shares the same hobby and who is exactly that — fun and quirky. He finds them in the unlikeliest of places and drops them my way. My current favorites are a tiny pink pig flashlight with a fat snout that oinks when the “on” button is pressed; a red and yellow Lego man with flashlight bulbs embedded on the soles of his feet; a set of lime green, almond-shaped “eyes” with purple pupils; a mini, red light saber with multiple functions: flashlight, flasher, whistle, and glow stick; a cute, blue, hand-cranked, battery-less one with several lighting options; and a burgundy, Victorinox Swisscard Lite: not any bigger than a credit card with Swiss knife options and an LED light.

Time and again I unearth them from my drawer and marvel at their uniqueness. I switch them all on and literally bask in their light. I question myself: Why this newfound affection? Then it suddenly hit me: they are all pretty. I am a girl, after all, and over and above function, I need a lot of “pretty” in my life.

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Thank you for your letters. You may reach me at cecilelilles@yahoo.com.