In The Spotlight

Many years ago, because I possessed some experience in architectural design, a manufacturer of architectural ceiling and lighting products hired me as national sales and marketing manager. Considering the world of design is radically different - make that radically alien - from the world of sales and marketing, the experience did not fail to fascinate.

 As a strategy intended to elevate my grasp of architectural lighting into the upper realms of unassailable mastery, I was dispatched for two weeks of instruction at the General Electric Lighting & Electrical Institute in Nela Park, Cleveland, Ohio.

This institute featured a variety of instructional tools including an auditorium in which the entire lighting system changed while the students sat in their seats gaping. The transformation was accomplished by synchronized rotating of all ceiling panels during which one type of lights departed and a different type arrived, remarkably altering the room's appearance. I state this to emphasize that the course was not at all the sort that trucked out a droning professor with a stick of chalk. No expense was spared to defeat our short attention spans with educational theatrics.

Written examination results were projected on screens for review in class. A wrong answer triggered a short buzz, a ludicrously wrong answer an electronic raspberry. For example: to a question about how to light a toilet someone won a raspberry by choosing a spotlight. It seemed altogether self-evident. Think about it: Who wants to sit on a toilet seat under a spotlight? Even in complete privacy with the door locked, would one not be unpleasantly conscious of the howling absurdity of the picture?

If your patience has endured this far I will now pose a question related to our current accommodations: Guess how our toilet is lighted?

Yes, one spotlight is over the sink and the other directly above the toilet seat. When occupying this seat one cannot avoid a feeling of being in a 1940's police interrogation movie scene. The beam is oppressive and fully capable of bullying a timid soul into confessing to any crime, revealing where the money is stashed, and betraying the whereabouts of Bugsy. Sometimes I can almost hear a voice barking, "Come on, Eddie, we know you're the guy!" This is not so much because my name really is Eddie but because no movie has ever shown a stool pigeon under a harsh light, undergoing police interrogation, who was not named Eddie.

On the other hand the weather was beautiful today.