The lightbulb over my head: revelations at 35 lumens

I had a great uncle who refused to "see" doctors. He'd never admit to the farsightedness that progressed with his age—he'd just read from the distance of outstretched arms.

One day, he happened upon someone’s lost spectacles in a telephone booth. Trying them on while searching a listing, a world of clarity opened before him. Those phone-booth-found glasses rested on his head from then on, ready whenever he inspected something minute or checked the latest sports scores. I was reminded of my uncle the other weekend when I finally broke down and tried Petzl's Tikka XP Hazloc headlamp—conceding a long battle of function over vanity.

I'd always felt much cooler with my Mini-Mag in my mouth whenever I needed a hands-free work light. In my mind, the headlamp's elastic webbing was a little too reminiscent of the dental headgear I wore to fix my overbite. It wasn't until I had to do some orthodontics on a mysterious shower faucet leak that I literally saw the light (and to stick with the dental riff, working that close to the shower wall with the flashlight in my mouth was bound to chip a tile, if not a tooth).

Turns out the Petzl wasn't as big and obtrusive as I had remembered. I could get close enough to stare right into the opening of the shower body (right), finding the the old brass seat and the tattered washers we'd stacked up to try to stop the leak. I began with a wide, ambient light but adjusted the lens to focus the LED beam into the hole, alternating between 3 choices of brightness as I chiseled out the old fittings.

Like my uncle, my world was illuminated. Although I fear, like him, that I'm becoming dependent on my headgear. I wore the headlamp around the house all weekend, pulsing light to peer into the back of the refrigerator, to scope out my little girl’s tonsils when she complained of a sore throat, and even to find my Swiss army knife's missing tweezers hidden amid the dust bunnies under the couch. Now, whenever I gear up for my weekend projects, I put on the headlamp before lacing up my boots. I admit I feel naked without it—but hey, at least I didn't find it in a phone booth.