PLUMBER'S HELPER
Last week I was awakened by someone pounding on my bedroom floor. ...From underneath the house. Can't say that's ever happened before. I sat up in bed, blinking, wondering if I was still asleep. Then I heard it again. This time it was followed by a voice shouting "HELLO?"
I sat there thinking. A thousand questions were shooting around inside my head. Is there someone under my house? How did he get there? WHY is he there? Is he stuck? Am I going to have to call the fire department? Am I dreaming this? Is it some sort of evil spirit that I can pin the blame on for the plague of gnats that has infested my house? (I'm not kidding when I say that it's like the freaking Amityville Horror in my bathroom and kitchen right now, and I can NOT get rid of them!) Or is this some sort of elaborately plotted vignette for an episode of an updated version of "Candid Camera"?
"HELLO?!" This time is was more insistent. I was still confused but tentatively (dutifully) answered, "YES?"
The muffled, disembodied Allen Funt-like voice said, "TURN ON THE WATER IN THE TUB."
...What?
"TURN ON WHAT?"
"TURN ON THE WATER IN THE TUB."
Okaaaay.... I got up and turned the water on in the bathtub, just as the mysterious voice had instructed. I stood there next to my bathtub thinking, "Well, this is certainly an unusual way to start the day."
It was the plumber. He'd been out a couple of days before, responding to my duplex neighbor's plumbing issues. I'd seen him talking to the maintenance guy and digging a deep hole outside my back door. And now he was back. Did he not think it was a little weird to talk through the floor from underneath the house to someone who hadn't actually even called (or expected) a plumber? Without so much has a howdy-do? Plumber etiquette. Sheesh.
This went on for a while. I continued to follow instructions, above-deck. I turned the water off. I turned it on again. I turned it off. He yelled, I yelled. I went ahead and got dressed, because, you know, so much for taking a shower. It's a good thing I was home. My neighbor (the one with the problem) had already left for work. I muttered a lot while I heard clanging under my feet.
While this was going on, the dedication ceremony for the Bush Library at SMU was happening. I had switched on the television to watch it, but every five minutes I was having to jump up and do something for the plumber (shouldn't I have gotten some sort of assistant's pay for all this?). It was fairly annoying. I tried to temper my irritation by firing off sarcastic Facebook updates about the plumber AND about the Bush Library festivities (so many people valiantly trying to think of nice things to say about George on his special day). (When typing out Condoleezza Rice's name I discovered that "Condoleezza" is spelled with two "z's" -- who knew? Shouldn't I have noticed that, like, eight years ago?)
After about an hour, the disembodied voice was knocking on my back door. Plumber-guy needed to look at my bathtub. (My bathtub was getting a lot of action that day.) My two cats were frozen in terror at the sight of the large man standing at my kitchen door.
"Don't worry, I won't let your kitties out. Hello, kitties!"
And with that, I was no longer irritated. As I've said before, you can always trust a man who likes cats. (I'm sure Hitler and John Wayne Gacy probably liked cats, just to screw up my theory.)
So he lumbered in. The guy was 70 if he was a day. A big man (big-tall AND big-wide), in gray coveralls. Wheezing and limping. Wishing, I'm sure, that he could retire, god damn it. As far as I could tell, he had no assistant with him that day. How did that old guy get under the house? What if he got stuck? Or had a stroke under there? I felt my chest tighten as I thought of being trapped under a house. (I never really thought of myself as a person with claustrophobia, but the older I get the more anxious I feel when I merely THINK about being in a confined space.* When Saddam Hussein's name comes up, I don't think of the war crimes or the violence or the tyranny. I think of that "spider hole." And I shudder. But I digress.)
I guess his clanging away under the house cleared up the problem, because he was gone by the time the gaggle of dignitaries at SMU began to disperse. While the five living presidents were hobnobbing under the watchful gaze of the Secret Service and a thousand trained snipers on every nearby rooftop, I was a mere mile and a half away, listening to a plumber yell at me from underneath my house.
My life is very full.
***
*Just typing the words "confined space" made me think of this wonderful little monologue from "Fawlty Towers" in which Sybil is languidly talking to a guest about psychiatry:
Sybil Fawlty: "Old people are wonderful when they have so much life, aren't they? Gives us all hope, doesn't it? My mother on the other hand is a little bit of a trial, really. You know, it's alright when they have the lifeforce but Mother -- well she's got more of the deathforce really. She's a worrier. She has these, well, morbid fears they are, really. Vans is one. Rats. Doorknobs. Birds. Heights. Open spaces. Confined spaces. It's very difficult getting the space right for her really, you know. Footballs. Bicycles. Cows. And she's always on about men following her, I don't know what she thinks they're going to do to her. Vomit on her, Basil says."
I sat there thinking. A thousand questions were shooting around inside my head. Is there someone under my house? How did he get there? WHY is he there? Is he stuck? Am I going to have to call the fire department? Am I dreaming this? Is it some sort of evil spirit that I can pin the blame on for the plague of gnats that has infested my house? (I'm not kidding when I say that it's like the freaking Amityville Horror in my bathroom and kitchen right now, and I can NOT get rid of them!) Or is this some sort of elaborately plotted vignette for an episode of an updated version of "Candid Camera"?
"HELLO?!" This time is was more insistent. I was still confused but tentatively (dutifully) answered, "YES?"
The muffled, disembodied Allen Funt-like voice said, "TURN ON THE WATER IN THE TUB."
...What?
"TURN ON WHAT?"
"TURN ON THE WATER IN THE TUB."
Okaaaay.... I got up and turned the water on in the bathtub, just as the mysterious voice had instructed. I stood there next to my bathtub thinking, "Well, this is certainly an unusual way to start the day."
It was the plumber. He'd been out a couple of days before, responding to my duplex neighbor's plumbing issues. I'd seen him talking to the maintenance guy and digging a deep hole outside my back door. And now he was back. Did he not think it was a little weird to talk through the floor from underneath the house to someone who hadn't actually even called (or expected) a plumber? Without so much has a howdy-do? Plumber etiquette. Sheesh.
This went on for a while. I continued to follow instructions, above-deck. I turned the water off. I turned it on again. I turned it off. He yelled, I yelled. I went ahead and got dressed, because, you know, so much for taking a shower. It's a good thing I was home. My neighbor (the one with the problem) had already left for work. I muttered a lot while I heard clanging under my feet.
While this was going on, the dedication ceremony for the Bush Library at SMU was happening. I had switched on the television to watch it, but every five minutes I was having to jump up and do something for the plumber (shouldn't I have gotten some sort of assistant's pay for all this?). It was fairly annoying. I tried to temper my irritation by firing off sarcastic Facebook updates about the plumber AND about the Bush Library festivities (so many people valiantly trying to think of nice things to say about George on his special day). (When typing out Condoleezza Rice's name I discovered that "Condoleezza" is spelled with two "z's" -- who knew? Shouldn't I have noticed that, like, eight years ago?)
After about an hour, the disembodied voice was knocking on my back door. Plumber-guy needed to look at my bathtub. (My bathtub was getting a lot of action that day.) My two cats were frozen in terror at the sight of the large man standing at my kitchen door.
"Don't worry, I won't let your kitties out. Hello, kitties!"
And with that, I was no longer irritated. As I've said before, you can always trust a man who likes cats. (I'm sure Hitler and John Wayne Gacy probably liked cats, just to screw up my theory.)
So he lumbered in. The guy was 70 if he was a day. A big man (big-tall AND big-wide), in gray coveralls. Wheezing and limping. Wishing, I'm sure, that he could retire, god damn it. As far as I could tell, he had no assistant with him that day. How did that old guy get under the house? What if he got stuck? Or had a stroke under there? I felt my chest tighten as I thought of being trapped under a house. (I never really thought of myself as a person with claustrophobia, but the older I get the more anxious I feel when I merely THINK about being in a confined space.* When Saddam Hussein's name comes up, I don't think of the war crimes or the violence or the tyranny. I think of that "spider hole." And I shudder. But I digress.)
I guess his clanging away under the house cleared up the problem, because he was gone by the time the gaggle of dignitaries at SMU began to disperse. While the five living presidents were hobnobbing under the watchful gaze of the Secret Service and a thousand trained snipers on every nearby rooftop, I was a mere mile and a half away, listening to a plumber yell at me from underneath my house.
My life is very full.
***
*Just typing the words "confined space" made me think of this wonderful little monologue from "Fawlty Towers" in which Sybil is languidly talking to a guest about psychiatry:
Sybil Fawlty: "Old people are wonderful when they have so much life, aren't they? Gives us all hope, doesn't it? My mother on the other hand is a little bit of a trial, really. You know, it's alright when they have the lifeforce but Mother -- well she's got more of the deathforce really. She's a worrier. She has these, well, morbid fears they are, really. Vans is one. Rats. Doorknobs. Birds. Heights. Open spaces. Confined spaces. It's very difficult getting the space right for her really, you know. Footballs. Bicycles. Cows. And she's always on about men following her, I don't know what she thinks they're going to do to her. Vomit on her, Basil says."