When those curly-Q low-energy lightbulbs came out, I was eager to use them. I started buying them as soon as they came out, which means I spent a lot of money on those bulbs, up front — they were seven and eight dollars apiece when they first came onto the market. I was willing to spend more to save more in the long run, and I was eager to reduce my energy use. Boy, was I naive!

Those bulbs suck — we’ve been ripped off. Someone is laughing all the way to the bank on this one.

For one thing, there are a lot of light fixtures that they don’t fit — lampshades that can’t accommodate those curly-fries bulbs — lamp harps that won’t work with them. Lamp department managers everywhere are seeing a buying boon as we replace our old lamps with fixtures that accommodate the bulbs — I’m thinking conspiracy.

Then, the light they give off is crummy. Task lighting, reading lighting and kitchen lighting need much brighter light than you can get with those stupid bulbs — a hundred of those bulbs in one room is still poor light — they’re weak and dim. Duh! How did they miss that one? Did they think I wouldn’t notice?

In my last house, a rental, I had a four-bulb overhead light fixture on a dimmer switch — the light was bright for working and could be dimmed for dining. Perfect for me. Like an idiot, I decided to replace the incandescent bulbs in that fixture with four curly bulbs, because I wanted to keep my energy bill from rising. That idea almost turned into a house fire. Turns out, you can’t use the curly bulbs with dimmers. Who knew? So the light fixture blew, burned out the dimmer kit, which I’d paid for and had installed, scorched the ceiling above the light fixture and shorted out the power on one side of my house — the side that included my computer. Sigh.

That’s another thing — the bulbs fail. Seems to me they were supposed to last a long time — years. That was part of the deal. I’ve had those bulbs quit on me in a matter of weeks. Even though the price of the bulbs has dropped, they still fail and have to be replaced.

The final straw, though, was learning that when the bulbs actually break — if you drop one on a hard surface and it shatters — you have a hazardous waste situation. There’s mercury in those bulbs. That’s right — MERCURY. We don’t want mercury in our lives — seems to me that they don’t even use mercury for thermometers any longer, because it’s so, oh, I don’t know ... DANGEROUS? Mercury splashes — mercury breaks up into pieces or it rolls around and looks like something a kid might want to play with. I’m not willing to have mercury, in a breakable form, in my house.

I’d never have bought those bulbs if I’d know they had even a drop of mercury in them. At least when the regular incandescent bulbs break, you can clean them up without a HazMat suit.

I don’t think those bulbs should be any place with kids under 12. Kids do experiments — kids do things like melting their crayons on lightbulbs, which my brother and I did as a “science” project when we were 7 and 5. The bulbs blew up. It’s harder to do that with the cooler curly bulbs, but my point is that kids think up stupid things and then do them. Mercury contamination should not be one of the risks of being stupid. If your 12-year-old is still playing “Jackass,” don’t buy those bulbs.

There are places I’ll use those stupid bulbs since I still have a lot of them, in closets, the laundry area, the porch — places where the tepid light isn’t completely annoying. If I saved money on my energy bill, it wasn’t worth the initial price, the disappointing performance or the dangers of this “green” solution.

I’m still an environmentalist, but I’m not a stupid environmentalist. We got scammed. Incandescents are supposed to disappear from the market in another five years — I’m going to start hoarding them, now.

Judith writes a “Bossy Gardener” column every Wednesday in the Grand Junction Free Press Home Sweet Home section. She also writes a “View From The Driver’s Seat” column weekly in the FP.