What’s the worst that could happen? That’s a sentence most of us have heard far too often in our lives, and it’s always followed by a pretty bad mistake. I still remember being sixteen years old, and being goaded into “borrowing” my dad’s hot rod for a spin while he was out of town. “Come on”, my friends said, “what’s the worst that could happen?” Well, after I ran our dad’s 1950’s hot rod into a telephone pole, I suddenly learned what the worst possible scenario was going to be. Even now as an adult, I’ll hear about family members risking their lives for the sake of saving money on their utility bills. Just the other day, I went to visit my brother at his condo where he was hosting a barbecue. When I arrived and went into his backyard, I saw that my brother’s outdoor a/c system was caked in dirt plus leaves! I asked what gives with the filthy cooling system unit, and he said he’d just trimmed the tree branches and didn’t get around to cleaning up the debris. “It’s just leaves – what’s the worst that could happen?” Life can be poetically just sometimes, as the outdoor a/c device turned on and seemed to get louder with each second it ran. Within an minute, the device began to smoke from the inside! I’ve never seen my brother run so fast to cut the power to his house! That’s why you’re supposed to keep the outdoor a/c device clean and at least a few feet from bushes and other obstructions – unless you like having your component catch fire. I suppose he learned his lesson after that experience, as he had a heating and a/c service serviceman at his condo the next day to look over the damage.