Trust Your Gut!!!

It's Christmas night about 11:30 pm. I walk into the kids room to check on them, something I do periodically, and trip over the cord to the electric heater. Generally not a big deal but I begin to hear a very quiet hissing noise that almost sounds like someone welding two things together from somewhere off in the distance. I move around the room to try and determine the location of the hissing noise and decide it's coming from behind one of the dressers. That happens to be the outlet where the heater is plugged in. So I decide to turn off the heater. Once I do the sound disappears. But then before I leave the room I get a bug up my ass to unplug the heater. Why I'm not sure but I just want to do it, have to do it. You know that little voice deep inside your head that tells you when you're being a jack ass or that you really need to do something? That little voice told me to unplug the heater.

Now I'm on a mission to unplug the heater from the outlet. Since it's behind the dresser this proves to be a much larger challenge than just reaching behind a piece of furniture to unplug it. This dresser is heavy and difficult to maneuver since it's between two other pieces of furniture. I'm able to move the dresser enough to see what I'm dealing with. The plug doesn't look good. It's partially out of the socket and the cord is in some very bad angle. In fact it can't be seen until it's on top of the plug. I'm not an engineer but this can't be good. Now I really need to remove the plug if for no other reason to put it in another location. Eventually I'm able to move the dresser out enough to get behind it and pull out the plug.

When I look at it with the flashlight it looks bad. One of the prongs is black at the base where it enters the plastic. When I'm able to wake my husband and tell him what happened, and we move the dresser back into place, I bring the heater into the family room where I'm able to look at the plug closely. Not only was the prong blackened at the base, but it looks like the blackened portion was originating from the inside out. The gray plastic surrounding the prong turned various shades of brown and had begun to melt. The discoloration extended to the outside of the plastic plug and appeared to be heading toward the cord itself. It had not covered the head where the prongs stick out but it may have done so given more time. Since I heard the hissing for less than a minute before turning off the heater, gulp...

Holy Crap!! What would have happened if I left the room and didn't listen to my gut telling me I needed to unplug the cord? What if I didn't have such sensitive hearing and I didn't hear the hissing? What if I had given up trying to unplug the cord when I had trouble moving the dresser? It frightens me to think that a fire could have taken the lives of my most precious gifts. Was my husband correct when he said I probably saved our lives tonight? Who knows.
Am I over reacting? I hope so, but something tells me that things could have been really ugly tonight if I had not unplugged the heater.

The bottom line is this: If that little voice is telling you to do something LISTEN!!! You never know what will happen. I can only hope this helps someone.

I hope you had a Merry Christmas and continue to do so for many years to come!