The day that will never come

For me the day that will never come was last Saturday. I made a stupid mistake, not reading the electrical panel labels well enough before proceeding to replace a broken switch in the electrical stove. At some point, my body became the thing through which the current was flowing. Within a few hundredths of a second, the main residual current device in the panel sensed that current was not returning through the expected cable. It thought “this is the day that will never come” and tripped, saving my life. I have always been interested in safety and the systems that work to build it in. When someone tells me they avoided a car accident and the brake pedal vibrated under their foot, I know it is the anti-lock braking system kicking in. You should really never have put yourself in this situation to begin with, having to slow down so suddenly, and also in this moment of emergency you should be relieving pressure on the pedal so the tires do not skid. Yet here we are, and now, after ten…