I did something very stupid last weekend

First, I was swapping around light bulbs (deciding where to put the nice bright white "daylight" ones), and was confused by the fact that an old 3-way incandescent bulb was working ok in normal lamp fixtures, but wasn't working at all in a 3-way lamp fixture.

I finally figured out that one of the bulb's filaments was broken, plus one of the contacts in the 3-way lamp was missing/broken.

Looking at the lamp socket, I wondered if maybe the contact had slipped down into the hole underneath it.

So I fetched some metal tweezers and reached down into the socket with them.

Big spark. Smoke. The tweezer tips got melted.

I had forgotten to unplug the lamp.

But luckily, I didn't get shocked. I didn't even feel a tingle.

Nevertheless, I should always remember to unplug things before tinkering with them.