I’ve known about this little phrase for most of my life.

I’ve presumed that it meant if you take time to take care of the small problems, they won’t become big problems.

And, whether my family agrees with me or not, I try to follow it, within reason of course.

I was a bit preoccupied with the cycle of events the other day. 

For one, I had told Mama J I would be home for lunch, albeit a bit late.

And really, nothing had thrust its unlikely head into my face to change that.

Other than a little late seemed to be stretching out in front of my grasp a little bit farther as the morning slipped along.

All I had to do was grab one of our trailers that had been scheduled in for new decals, run to the normal electrical supply store I used and pick up a few supplies that I had called in ahead of time.

It all seemed to be clipping along okay, other than the late dinner thing, and I was hurrying along, within reason, of course.

Sometimes though, the smallest impression alerts to the largest consequence.

I think that is what happened when, about ten miles into my journey home, I glanced in my side mirror as I changed lanes and saw the clearance lights twinkling along merrily at me.

Except I didn’t have my clearance lights on.

I didn’t have any lights on, for that matter.

So, I pulled off the road, walked back to the trailer, and stopped short.

Smoke was billowing out from under the trailer.

And a crackling, snapping noise could be heard, very distinctly.

A 100-m.p.h. glance showed me the trailer wiring harness had been dragging, evidently for the past ten miles or more.

And since we have a full-sized battery in the trailer for the jack and to help charge up hand tool batteries, cook dinner, etc., I figured I knew what might be going on.

Because we have that battery hooked up without a fuse.

And all the pretty little sparklies that my clearance lights were doing were going on within the wiring harness also.

I wasn’t sure what to do.  Plastic was dripping from where the greatest short to the trailer frame was occurring.  It looked too hot to handle with my bare hands.

I jumped into the trailer and grabbed a side cutter and tried to cut the offending part away.

But every time I tried to cut it, it showered me and the general vicinity with sparks and noise.

By now, the smoke had changed from a billow to a good-sized cloud, and I worried any of the passing traffic would call the fire department, and then I’d for sure have some crow to eat. 

Luckily, I was able to get the harness hacked in to after several tries, and most of the action died down to a small flicker, and then nothing.

Or so it seemed.

When I pulled the trailer up on the slab, the next day to repair, I saw that the energy hadn’t been completely eliminated.

Because as soon as I grabbed the harness to see what was what, it snapped at me loud enough that I let loose of it.

Bryce heard it, and came over to see what was going on.  He grabbed one of the wires and said, “You know this one’s still hot?”

Well, I knew something was hot, but until then, not what, exactly. 

So, I cut it out from the frame, and commenced on what I thought would be a leisurely hour of repairing the trailer harness. 

But karma was right there with me, and as I pulled on the harness, it completely disintegrated, and I could see it had melted way back into the frame.

Nine hours later, and many times up and down and working an unwieldy new harness through too small of holes and threading it back out of blindsided holes in the frame, I had the lights working again.

It seems I must have been in just enough of a hurry that I forgot to hook that harness up in the first place. 

My Americano is getting cold.  I need to get back to work.