It’s the problems that keep changing into other things that really get to me. Like electricity. I don’t mind it at all if it comes looking like wires and switches. I tend to do my house wiring hot because I know where the electricity is and I can avoid touching it pretty easily. It’s when electricity comes disguised as countertop railings or refrigerator door handles or refrigerator dribble pans that I get upset.

We can’t touch our refrigerator while we use our vacuum without getting a shock for instance. I called the company repairman and asked if that meant our vac was defective. He laughed and told me no — most vacuums do that. His mother keeps calling him up when she discovers that hers gives her a shock when she touches the refrigerator. He guesses she may never learn.

For me, though, if the problem doesn’t change what it looks like, its not very confusing. The real problems are the ones that keep changing shape.

That reminds me of the town that has one way streets that change direction on alternate days. You can always tell strangers. My father-in-law had that happen once. He was taking his family to a conference in Cleveland and they arrived the day after Cleveland instituted one way streets. They had reservations at the – I think it was the Coolidge Hotel – but as soon as they would get close, a one way street would take them in the wrong direction. After an hour and a half he said to hell with it, and started down the wrong way. A cop flagged him down after a block and explained to the out-of-towner he’d have to be more careful about flaunting local laws. Hank explained where he was headed and told of the different avenues he had already tried. The policeman showed him a map and became frustrated himself. After some time, the policeman began leading the way with Hank following. They ended up with the policeman turning on his flashers and going the wrong way up a one-way street several blocks to the hotel. Sometimes you really can’t get there from here.

Its the problems that keep changing form that really cause grief. For instance, one time my dorm had a problem with very high electric bills and a friend and I spent some time trying to track down the problem. While crawling around the kitchen one day I touched the dribble pan of the big commercial refrigerator and about got thrown across the room. I found the problem, though. Some wire had shorted out through the dribble pan. It hadn’t shorted completely enough to blow circuit breakers, but enough to use up a lot of juice. I don’t think I’ve ever seen dribble pans mentioned as the source of major problems anywhere, but they’ve managed to be one of those problems that often come disguised as something else several times in my life, so I thought I’d pass on some of the important things to remember about them. It is sort of like multi-level-marketing salesmen. Just when you think you can spot one coming from a block away, a good friend will come up to you with a way to make some spare cash on the side with no money down and only a little investment in your time and effort. While he’s trying to get you to make that commitment, its hard to pin him down as to exactly what this business is. It can be selling. It can be making deals. It can be developing goods and services. It can be importing. Anything you want it to be, and you’re the boss but he won’t tell you exactly what it is. Somewhere along the line a little light goes on in your head that says “multilevel-marketing salesman” and you know its time to cut and run like hell. Too bad. Good friends are hard to find.

So you’ve got this “dribble pan” in your refrigerator somewhere that collects the runoff from the defrost. The theory is that it will evaporate and the crud will dry and be harmless. Usually that is so, but occasionally dribble pans turn into something else and the liquid stays wet and kind of rots. If it was always rotting you’d know about it and clean it regularly like your teeth. But it only happens every great long once in a while and you’ll be walking around for a couple of days wondering what that really weird garbage smell is until finally a little light goes on in your head that says:”dribble pan.” By then its a major contender for superfund status.

Maybe you ought to clean it on a regular basis, like once a month. Or not.

I hear that the ISS smells like a rotting garbage pit. Maybe they’ve got dribble pan problems.