Total Blackness

At my job, we print a lot of photos, which means that I've been trained to operate a large, sophisticated machine full of compartments, hoses, wires, tanks, and rollers that all break at random.

That was one impressive sentence. Anyway, so I was printing a bunch of photos, and an error message pops up. "Cartridge B out of paper."

No problem. This one I've done a couple of times. You open the door, slide the enormous cartridge of its rack, and replace it with another one. Except that all the other ones were labeled "A". I went and found a helpful photo guy and he said, "Do you know how to change out the paper?" and I said, "Sure, you just put in a new cartridge."

He smiled and said "Follow me, bring that thing."

So I hefted the empty cartridge and followed him into a dark room. Turns out, that for that particular cartridge, you have to change out the actual roll of special paper. Any light exposure, any light at all will ruin the entire roll of paper. So you have to do it blind.

He showed me how with a practice roll, First, slide it on the spinner, then place the wheel on, push it down, and engage the locking mechanism. Then place the spinner in the grooves on the side, if it's right, the roll will spin, then you find the tape, and peel it off, then thread the paper through a series of grooves, and then close the cartridge and snap down the locks on both sides. All in total blackness.

Now as a ninja, fighting blind and/or destroying things is no problem. Performing blind technical maintenance is a totally different story.

I had a practice round with my eyes closed. Then photo guy asked if I wanted him to stay while I changed it out. "Yes! and could you please stand by the light?" I was afraid that if I had to cross the room and turn out the light, I'd never find my way back to the workbench.

So he turned out the light, and it was SOO dark. I got the paper out of it's protective bag, and was surprised by how big it was. I found the "shiny" side by feel and then tried to thread it on the spinner, but I couldn't get it to go on. I couldn't figure out what was wrong, it felt like the hole in the roll was on, but it wouldn't push down. So I pushed really hard, and something pinged off, flew right by my face, and I screamed gave a battle cry that froze the blood of my enemies.

"Oh yeah" helpful photo guy said. "There's a plastic stopper on the paper that you need to take off before it'll go on the spinner."

I shot him a glare and even though he couldn't see it, I'm sure he felt its heat.

I finally managed to get the thing loaded up, but it was intense. I don't like not being able to see. Not At ALL.