Method to their madness

When we first moved to Israel I knew that if I ever needed a good laugh, all I had to do was watch a typical Israeli trying to pull an electrical plug out of a wall outlet. You see, without exception, if someone has lived here for any significant length of time, they will ALWAYS brace their thumb and forefinger against the wall outlet before pulling out the plug.

I used to ask myself what the heck they expected to happen... that the outlet would come away with the plug???

Well, yes... it turns out that's exactly what they expect to happen. And with good reason.

You see, unlike in the rest of the civilized world where electrical outlets and light fixtures are attached to studs, joists or other solid building members, here in Israel they can (and often are) attached only to the surrounding plasterboard (gevess in Hebrew). This wouldn't be so bad if Israeli gevess were as solid as its foreign equivalent. But it's not.

Israeli gevess is only slightly stronger than the paint that covers it... and a person can easily put a dent in it by simply rapping their knuckles against it sharply. This presents all kinds of challenges when hanging things like artwork on the walls because anything of significant weight hanging from a single nail will tear a trench in your wall and leave you to find a smashed picture frame when you come home from work one day.

When we first moved into our home, Zahava and I went to Ikea and bought all kinds of handy things to mount on our walls such as coat hooks, towel racks and shelf units. Needless to say not one of them lasted more than a day under the weight of a coat, towel or book. The incredible part is that good quality, American/European-quality plasterboard exists here. But because it is significantly more expensive, almost nobody uses it when building houses.

Last night when Zahava got home from some errands she came downstairs and mentioned conversationally that something in the living-room smelled like it was burning. You can imagine this got my attention, so I ran upstairs and, sure enough, one of the outlets into which a space heater was plugged (actually it was plugged into an outlet splitter... one of those things that makes a single outlet into two) was hot to the touch and visibly smoking.

My first instinct was to just pull out the plug, but when I checked more closely I realized that it was the outlet splitter that was hot and smoking, not the outlet itself. So being a typical foreigner I grabbed the whole thing, and without bracing my thumb and forefinger against the outlet, proceeded to yank splitter out of the wall.

Needless to say, the entire outlet began sliding out of the wall and I was rewarded with a loud 'POP' accompanied by a flash light and a trickle of acrid smoke from one of the outlet holes as the splitter finally came free.

When I reached our electrician at home (yes, I have his home and cell phone number!) he asked a few intelligent questions about how things stood and told me he'd come by in the morning to replace the outlet. He told me that if the outlet itself had continued to smoke or sizzle he would have instructed me to turn off the breaker and he would have come right over to deal with it... but I'd been lucky.

The lesson we learn from this, boys and girls, is never, NEVER make fun of Israelis when you see them bracing their thumbs and forefingers against wall outlets before removing electrical plugs. Trust me... there is method to their madness.