Personal essays
Security in an unsecure place
Changing batteries
Last week Maggie and I were engaged in the same activity, at the same time, four-hundred plus miles away, with the same level of success.
Actually, it would be more accurate to say, with the same level of lack of success.
I bought a pack of AirTags a couple of years ago. Those are the little devices from Apple that help you keep track of where items are. I attached one to my bike, put one in my computer case, and gave a couple to Maggie.
So it made sense that our batteries were low at the same time.
And that’s why we both were replacing them last week and cursing as the new batteries didn’t seem to work.
Bike locks
I’m reminded me of a sermon I heard as an undergrad at a sunrise Easter service.
Friends took me to a black Baptist church and the pastor talked about how you can’t be secure in an insecure place.
He painted a picture of a dangerous neighborhood that you biked to.
And there were no bike racks or anything that you could lock your bike to.
So you shrugged and put your lock through the back wheel and connected it to the frame of the bike.
When you got back, would you expect to see your bike still there?
The second time that Kim and I were in Amsterdam we met a friend who had gone to school there. He said that he had been told to buy a cheap bike and an expensive lock.
The city is still teeming with them. There is a bike parking area near the train station that is packed with more bikes than most parking garages are filled with cars.
Safety bottles
But still we try.
We notice that children are getting into medicine bottles so we make child proof caps.
Then we notice that adults with arthritis can’t open the bottles to get to their pain relief, so we make special bottles for them.
We try to secure things and then we notice the unintended consequences and try to address those.
And that brings me back to last week and Maggie and me unsuccessfully trying to replace our batteries.
She contacted Duracell’s support and didn’t get any satisfactory answers.
This was surprising to me since it is a known issue.
At least I was able to find the answer online.
By the way, it was a reversal of roles. Usually it’s me railing at a company for something that doesn’t work and her calmly finding the answer online somewhere.
The best we can
It turns out that kids like to put those little round batteries in their mouth so Duracell covers some of them with a bittering agent.
It says it right on the package.
It also turns out that this bittering agent is just enough to keep an Air Tag from powering up properly.
Maggie tried the first battery and assumed she got a bad one. But after she’d tried all of the batteries in the container she figured something had to be wrong.
I took the abrasive side of a dry sponge and rubbed the coating off of the negative side of the battery.
On the one hand, it cost me an hour to get to this point.
On the other hand, if that coating keeps kids from swallowing it and endangering themselves, I’m all for it.
On the other hand, I say in a nod to Tevye, there are some pretty basic things we can do that would keep more kids safe and we don’t tend to.
I placed the battery in the Air Tag and it chirped. I reattached it to my bicycle.
I looked at it and shook my head. It’s really not much better than threading a lock through the wheel and attaching it to the frame.
We don’t currently live in a secure place - and yet I feel better securing things the best we can.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 162. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe