Friday evening, I was sitting in my family room and I heard
the noise that indicates my kids have turned on the water outside. I yelled out
the back door to the kids, “Stop playing with the water! You have 10 minutes
before you need to come in and get ready for bed.”
“We’re not playing with the water,” they all chimed.
“Well, just turn it off, please,” I instructed.
They insisted, “But we didn’t turn it on!”
I closed the door and listened more carefully to the sound
that I had thought meant the water was running. I followed the noise through
the kitchen and traced it to my refrigerator. Uh oh, I thought. My refrigerator is making really strange sounds!
I opened and closed the doors a few times (like that was going to stop the
sound and make everything okay.) Any technician would agree. “Well it was broken, but since you opened and
closed all the doors, you fixed it!”
I decided I’d probably have to call someone to come look at
it on Monday. In the meantime, I just plugged in my ear buds and cranked up The
Psychadelic Furs. Voila! No more annoying noise.
At some point on Saturday, I asked Jackson to mow the lawn
because I was pretty certain if he didn’t mow it soon, he was going to need a
scythe just to clear a path to the front door. This is when we discovered that
he couldn’t mow the lawn because a small lake had formed on the side of the
house. You know, where the water was running. Where the water had been running
full blast for nearly 24 hours straight. Yeah, there. Apparently I was right
the first time. It wasn’t the refrigerator; it was the water spigot on the outside of the house.
I walked outside my house and was greeted with this sight.
I started hyperventilating, envisioning my water bill. I
remembered my parents yelling at me for taking such long showers as a teen. “Do
you want to pay the water bill?” they demanded. “You don’t need to take a 30
minute shower!” Ohmygosh, that was nothing
compared to this!
I kept calm and tried to figure out the best way to go about
stopping the leak. To an outsider, it may have looked like I was running around in circles, flapping my arms like
Chicken Little, squawking, “My water’s leaking! My water’s leaking!” But I
assure you, I was busy, using my cerebral cortex to formulate a logical plan
for curbing the steady flow of water.
Thankfully, my level-headed friend told me to call the
emergency number for the water department. I didn’t even know there was such a
thing. I called, explained my situation, and was informed that some guys were
on their way over to check it out.
In the meantime, I figured I could keep the water from
gushing out by screwing a spray nozzle onto the hose. I ran across the street
(I didn’t actually run. I don’t do that. It’s an expression) to borrow one from
my neighbor. I realized I’d have to screw the sprayer onto to the hose with the
water rushing from the hose in a torrential stream. I’ll give you a minute to
picture this. Yep.
Me + hose + sprayer = me drenched from head to toe. Just as
I realized the sprayer didn’t even fit on the hose, the guys from the water
company showed up. They took one look at me, my wet hair stuck like seaweed to
my cheeks, my tank top plastered to me, my shorts dripping down my legs, and
started laughing. Well, the short guy laughed. A lot. The tall guy was all
business.
“Uh yeah, I tried to screw this sprayer on the end of the
hose. I didn’t work. It wasn’t one of my better ideas. Then again, it wasn’t my worst idea either,” I stammered.
The short guy laughed some more.
The tall guy screwed some sort of fitting onto the end of my
hose. He didn’t get wet at all. Apparently the secret is to fold the hose in
half, effectively crimping it and stopping the flow of water while screwing the
fitting onto the end. The short guy looked at me as I wiped the mascara from my
cheeks and attempted to smooth my dripping hair back off my face, and he
laughed some more. Not liking the short dude.
In the end, the guys stopped the surge of water and left. I
walked inside so I could change clothes before heading back to the football
field. No sooner did I get upstairs than the doorbell rang. I ran back down and
answered. The water guys stood there. “I’m sorry to bother you, but you know,
instead of calling a plumber, you could just go to Ace and ask for a . . .”
I interrupted at this point. “Thank you, but I don’t know
what you’re talking about, and I’m pretty sure I can’t fix this, and I’m scared
to go to Ace because I’m convinced the guys there all take bets on what crazy
fix-it problem I’ll come up with next.
And the short guy laughed again.
