In every civil society specialties develop. Individual emerge that are particularly good at one thing. The hunter is good at hunting and there is one who is good at preparing the meat that has been hunted while another makes clothes from the hide. The hunter takes his kill to the dresser who dresses the meat and is given in return meat and the hide. The dresser gives the hide from the animal goes to the sewer who then turns it into a hunting shirt for the hunter and gets meat in exchange for the clothes that came from the hunter’s kill that feed the person who dressed the meat that gave the sewer the hide who gives the hunter the shirt who gives the sewer meat.

So too, specialties develop in families. In ours, my spouse’s specialty is batteries. He is the go to guy for all things battery. Flat, round, joined, separate, AAAA to DD, Ni-Cad, lithium, aluminum, magnesium, trisneezium, alkaline, porcupine, you name it, he has it. One year I found the perfect birthday birthday present: A battery organizer with a power tester built right in. He loved it. I organized his batteries in it for him (I specialize in organizatiion). I showed it to him and he looked crestfallen. I knew what he was sad about. I was too. The organizer did not hold any where near enough batteries for his collection.

I remembered the batter organizer tonight because my mouse died. Mice are particularly vulnerable to Alkaline poisoning. If they are exposed to an alkaline battery for too long they simply die in their traces. In our house the battery specialist is also the mouse resuscitation personnel. When my mouse succumbs to Alkaline disorder, I wave it in the air when my spouse passed by and he reverently and tenderly takes the mouse in his hand. He returns some time later with the perfect antidote. He rubs the mouses tummy and soon the mouse is enlivened.

Book lights, it seems, suffer from an extreme sensitivity to their lithium levels dropping too low. You can tell when they start to get sick. Their bright cheery countenance begins to flag and soon they are listless. The next step is one I always try to avoid since it is so tragic for a light to flicker out at 2 in the morning in the last chapter of a thrilling book. If you ignore the early symptoms of the disorder, total brain death. Not a single synapse is crossed with even the smallest amount of electricity.

When we were putting together the first round of our inventory for the insurance claim it was hard to figure out a value for batteries. It was hard to imagine that anyone would have some many. It was harder still to understand that our “all electric” society runs on batteries these days.

We use batteries for our cell phones, our clocks, our toys, our tools and our lamps. The proliferation of batteries to replace on-demand electricity from walls switches to a host of totally comprehensiveness electronic solutions is astounding.

All of this introspection about batteries is because my mouse died.

After we moved into this huge temporary home we recognized that the space was so vast and the shag carpet so deep that we would have to change. We felt like “Honey I shrunk the kids.” To solve the problem of huge traveling travel distance accompanied with copious feet between we decided that a little session at the desktop. was in order.  We traded stuff off from our respective specialties. In the trade I got my very own supply of basic batteries.

Trouble is, I am not fully up to battery speed on healing thing as he can. He always can. Tonight I realized that my mouse was gravely ill. My spouse was asleep. I have one little green box and one that is pink that hold AA and AAA batteries which are the most common batteries for electronics. Even with the color coded boxes I just sat there looking at them.

When my mouse died tonight I felt helpless. My spouse is asleep. Depending on the level of energy crisis, I am not above wakening him to ask the difference between a nicad and a rock. I am clueless.

Each society has specialists. In our society at my house, we rely on them for batteries.