Have you

ever realized how many batteries per person in the United

States there are?

I was at my daughter

Olivia's Christmas program the other night and as I

looked around at all the other videotaping parents I

realized that each family represented at least five

battery-operated devices in their possession. At the

minimum there was probably a video camera, a still

camera, a cell phone and a pager per family. Now add to

that two watches, pocketbook flashlights, keyless car

entries and if they are like me, a set of night vision

goggles and a laser. This was just at this event. Imagine

tallying the amount of batteries that are in a person's

life.

About a week before this

event, my wife came up with this idea for an article

while we were talking on the telephone. She also had some

great other thoughts but I didn't record them because our

cordless phone died in the middle of the conversation.

Can you imagine where you would be if every battery in

your life died at the same time?

Besides living life like

you were in Alabama, you would be in for some serious

frustration. The car wouldn't crank, but that is good

'cause you'd have to stay close at home to get any calls

anyway. Can you imagine actually having to stay within a

6- or 8-foot range of the telephone while you talked? The

twisty cord knocking over dishes and glasses as you paced

nervously, not knowing what to do with 300 pounds of

useless plastic and wire gadgets that now lay idle. The

kids are crying, dad is mad because he has to get up to

change the channel, and you just bounced $2,100 in checks

because you forget to carry the 9.

The shear differences in

batteries are daunting, too. They are flat, round, square

or tubular. They are silver, copper, platinum and lead.

Sizes range from smaller than a dime to bigger than a

bread basket. We are most familiar with sizes AAA through

D because these are the ones we most often get wrong

Christmas morning. You've had that one special toy for

your son for six months, waiting on this day and you find

yourself screaming. "What? Size C?! I thought it

said D!"

And whatever happened to

battery sizes single A and anything B? I think maybe

their schematics were on somebody's laptop between Los

Angeles and New York and the guy forgot to recharge. They

just skipped right over those guys. And is it just me or

is it suspicious that battery sizes are very similar to

bra sizes? You could have Pamela Anderson pitching D

Energizers and Tara Lipinski pitching the Triple A

Duracells. Al Roker could be moving the C-sized

Ray-O-Vacs.

Of course, the king of the

batteries is the rechargeable. Just plop your electric

shaver in its stand, take that baby on a trip a thousand

miles away and realize an hour before the most important

meeting of your life that you didn't have the charger

plugged in - foolproof. I particularly have a love

for the aforementioned video camera battery. You can

charge this thing for a month and it will still run out

at the exact moment your son hits his first homerun.

It is Murphy's Law, the

chemical-electronic version. You can complain to the

place you bought it, but they always say, "It just

gets a ghost charge to it, you have to totally let it

discharge" If you're like me, you want to say,

"Yeah, you mean like 15 minutes into every time I

use the thing? When the camera cuts off and light goes

out, how do I discharge it more than that?" Am I

supposed to go to my local mortuary and sneak it into

some dead guy's pants?

And as my wife Julie

pointed out to me, why is it the older you get, the

smaller the battery? Kids in preschool are playing with

the toys that take the big clunky cells (I guess so they

can't take them out and eat them) and the elderly have

the pacemakers and hearing aids with the BB-sized

batteries that are oh-so easy to handle with a good set

of cataract eyes and a bad case of arthritis.

Ah, batteries, pour on the

juice.