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New lessons accompany life’s new phases By Marilyn E. White for the Mail Tribune Oct 09, 2022 12:15 AM A A I've been known to do some dumb things in my life! Really! Lol! Recently I have been doing them on purpose. Like letting my gas tank run down past half, buying the thickest toilet paper I could find and pouring bacon grease down the sink! Just to name a few. I have had fun being bad! It's a good thing my husband has passed because he would have killed me for doing those things, but he isn't here anymore, is he? But recently, as a new homeowner, I have had to learn a few things that I wasn't ever exposed to in my previously protected life. Like batteries. I never knew there was a positive and negative end on each one of them. Why would I? I never changed one in my whole life. Yep. It's true! But now I know. Lol! Also, smoke detectors! I really wish there was a volume/sensitivity button on them, maybe a “senior setting.” One drift of smoke, and that annoying alarm goes off. I'd rather wear an arm and hammer strung around my neck that goes off and gently hits me in the head to tell me to turn the heat down, instead of having to reset the alarm. Gotta get a chair, a broom, etc. Am I the only one who knows that drill? Hey, the arm and hammer also could be tied to the timer, couldn't it? That would let me know when the cookies I'm baking are about to burn and cause the stinkin’ fire alarm to go off! Or when my fingernails actually are dry enough to change the bed without smearing fingernail polish all over my sheets again. I recently had my 90-year-old mother notice my license plates expired in November. Oops! I never got a renewal in the mail, but that's another story for another day. Anyway, I contacted the DMV by phone, which took an hour and 10 minutes to get a renewal form sent to the correct address. Are they REALLY that busy? Then it took most of the afternoon after I got the paperwork to go through the DMV and get the new stickers. So after that, a friend of mine noticed a problem and asked me “What idiot did you have put your stickers on your plates for you?” Ahhh, I did. Lol! I put them on backward. Oops! So now I had to go back to the DMV and apply for another set to replace the ones I goofed up! Another most of the afternoon gone. I told the gal at the window that the idiot I had put them on — put them on wrong — was me! She got a big kick out of it and said it happens all the time, probably more often than people come back in to replace them. The things I don't know are somebody else’s livelihood. Like shutting the water valves under your sinks off and on at least twice a year to keep them from leaking. And also the only place really safe to plug in a hair dryer is where there is a 15-amp outlet. If you plug in a curling iron in the other plug, you are overloading the circuit. I'm not even gonna go there on how I know this. It cost me $250. Who knew? I've learned new things for new times in my life with the help of my friends. We never stop learning, do we? Life is a process. Marilyn E. White lives in Medford.