My son has a plastic turtle night light that he keeps on his bedside table.
It projects an underwater effect onto the walls and ceiling of his bedroom and plays ocean sounds. He originally bought it for me for my birthday, but 5 minutes after I’d opened the box, he claimed it as his.
5 weeks ago, the batteries started to run out on the turtle. Sometimes the ocean sounds didn’t play, or the underwater effect didn’t project properly. Sometimes, the turtle didn’t even switch on.
“It needs a new battery”, I told my son. “I’ll have to go to the shop and buy one for your turtle. I’ll do it soon, ok?”
“Ok, Mummy.”
I knew that the battery was one of those that’s round and flat, like a mini silver ice-hockey puck. I wasn’t sure which size to buy and knew that in order to check, I’d have to unscrew the two tiny little screws on the base of the turtle.
I also knew that I’d need a tiny little screwdriver to unscrew those two tiny little screws and I knew I didn’t have one of those either.
“I’ll have to buy a new screwdriver too”, I told my son. He nodded, earnestly.
A week or so passed by.
The batteries in the turtle were draining even more. And yet I still hadn’t gone to the shop to buy the screwdriver or the batteries.
Why?
Because it all seemed too complicated. Too hard.
I guess, deep down, I was worried that I wouldn’t find the right screwdriver or buy the correct battery, which seems a bit stupid in retrospect. But hey, this is how our brains work.
And so I avoided the task completely. I kept putting it off.
Do you do shit like this too?
Last week, I was rifling through a drawer in my house in which we keep all the crap we don’t know where else to put, like pieces of string and odd coins and old fire detectors.
It is also the drawer in which, some time ago, I seemingly decided to shove a tiny little screwdriver that was just the right one to unscrew those two tiny little screws on the back of my son’s turtle nightlight, and yet had also seemingly forgotten about.
And so I unscrewed those two tiny little screws…..
…..and saw that the turtle actually required 4 AA batteries, of which I had many, and not the mini silver ice-hockey puck battery that I’d assumed it would.
Changing the battery on the turtle took me 5 whole weeks of procrastinating and assuming and faffing and avoiding and all of 5 minutes to fix.