The Lightbulb Man

This happened twice some years ago.

I received a phone call from some guy in Texas. In a most humble and non-threatening voice, not sounding like a telemarketer or scam artist at all, he says to me he’s handicapped and confined to his house but makes a living by making light bulbs in his home and selling them over the phone.  He asks me to buy some.

Usually when I get a sales pitch over the phone it’s more direct.  Either I am asked to give to a charity I’ve never heard of, or I'm asked to surrender my social security number so they can free all the money in an account an uncle I never knew I had died and willed to me.  These are old, tried and tired telemarketing gimmicks, but this one was new and fresh.  

The whole idea of someone calling asking me to buy homemade lightbulbs to support a handicapped person such as himself was refreshing.  He had succeeded in turning the ignition to my brain on, and my pistons were chugging at a rapid pace wondering all sort of interesting things.  

He makes lightbulbs . . . at home???

Is he a glassblower?  A modern-day artisan.  That would be interesting.  I might ask to come over and watch him ply his trade.

Or maybe he buys the lightbulbs half assembled — light bulbs opened at the end with the tungsten, base, and contacts unassembled, and he snaps the tungsten into place in the base, attaches the base to contacts, and then screws (?) the base into the bulb.  Well, something like that.  Maybe that’s what he means by “makes lightbulbs at home.”

Okay, maybe that last bit -- screwing the base into the bulb -- is a problem.  But it's not the biggest problem.

How does he create the vacuum?  

Does he stick the bulb in his mouth, suck all the air out, then screw the base into the bulb faster than he can burp the air out of his lungs?  

Or does he have a huge, expensive machine in his workroom that, when turned on, makes the sound of a garbage truck driving through the neighborhood while it sucks all the air out of the room?

Or does he purchase expensive pressurized tanks that stand in the corners of his workroom that he uses to spray argon gas into the bulbs and then screw the bases in like really, really fast before the gas leaks out and you breath it in?

And then there is the last and most import issue.  

Who is going to purchase homemade lightbulbs over the phone from a guy who says he’s handicapped and confined to his home?

I can envision the bulbs arriving Fed-Ex, me screwing them in all over the house, turning the light switches on . . . and . . . and . . . suddenly its the 4th of July, fireworks — complete with colors, sparks, and flying glass — exploding everywhere, with the grand finale being my house burning down.

Hmmm.

“Gee, if you had only called a week ago, but I just replaced all my bulbs with new ones, and . . . besides . . . I gave at the office.”

Click!