My father was a preoccupied man. As a teenager, I glimpsed him gesturing to himself frequently rehashing some other conversation in his head, cerebrally focused upon eliciting another outcome, if only in his own mind.
One evening at hotel motel, on a business trip, he walked out of his room onto the patio, clad only in his boxer shorts and a white t-shirt, inadvertently locking himself out of his room. He had no choice but to walk to the front desk in his underwear, the cheap kind in which the flap REFUSED to stay in place, and ask to be let into his room. Many people would require, days, weeks, maybe even years to recover from the embarrassment, but not my father…He was actually pleased with himself.
By the end of the week he shared the escapade with the family, the clerk at the post office, the staff at the drugstore, the manager of the hardware store, the old men at church, and a few of the old ladies.
Being able to laugh at yourself doesn’t come easily for everyone. It seems like the more expensive the moron moment the more time must pass before the incident becomes humorous, which brings us to last month’s water heater incident.
Due to an unrelated flooding incident in the basement, we had to move the water heater away from the wall, so the the wall could be sealed with this insanely blue waterproofing compound that dries like plastic and has the application consistency of placenta. You don’t intimidate an eighty gallon water heater into moving away from the wall by flashing the old stink eye and shoving it with your hip. You need to drain it, or mostly drain it.
Tank style water heaters have two heating elements, one in the top of the tank and one in the bottom. To avoid burning out the elements during the draining process, you must turn off the power going to the water heater. BH turned off the breaker and we proceeded to drain the tank, after several false starts due to sediment in the tank, we drained enough water to allow us to shove it away from the wall, and I mean a strong arm grunting shove. Success. Briefly.
Within an hour the problem became evident. The water temperature peaked at sixty-eight degrees. BH thinks the shoving method flexed the top element, and broke it off. Worried we might not be able to get it replaced that day, we take quick showers. OMFG! The quickest shower I have ever taken. As I tried locating body parts that took refuge during the freeze, Better Half negotiates with plumbers and home improvement stores.
The good news was we were getting a water heater installed that day, the bad news was it was going to cost as much as the camera, BH wanted. So, he gave me the details, and I balked.
I wanted a tankless, I thought we wanted a tankless, and I assumed when the beast in the basement died, we would replace it with a tankless. The tankless takes a week, he said. And we need an electrician to install a breaker to handle the amperage, he said. But we have three 220 dryer plugs in the basement, surely there’s a breaker that’ll handle it. We go to the basement to investigate the breaker situation, and that’s when we discover the snippet of information that turns BH into a whirling dervish of profanity.
Constructed as a duplex, converted into a single family, and later renovated with an addition, our house has three separate electrical panels, in different locations. The breaker BH turned off to drain the water heater was not the right one, even though it had the words “water heater” penciled next to it. One of the other electrical panels also had an entry for “water heater”. BH sulked because, he should have checked the other panels to be sure before we murdered drained the tank.
I dropped the whole tankless whining bit and tried to console him to no avail. Secretly, I was laughing, not at him, but relating to the situation, because the same thing would have happened to me if I had been the one to instigate moving the tank.
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Later, we are having dinner with his brother and sister-in-law and the conversation turns to cameras. It seems my SIL wore out her SLR and had to replace it. They were discussing features and when the subject came to cost, I quipped, “Oh BH got a water heater instead”. I did that passive aggressive thing partners do to each other bringing up a sore subject in front of otherwise innocent bystanders. I didn’t mean it to be all passive aggressive, I thought I was being clever, then I cringed, because BH was not ready to laugh about it yet.
He starts explaining the situation in a very detailed fashion, beginning with the basement flood. When he reaches the part about the water heater, I ask if I can finish the story, and he allows me. I tell them the water heater developed kidney stones, so we performed dialysis, unsuccessfully. All of which was true, but I omitted the details about frying the element. It wasn’t important.
It’s been a month and he’s starting to snicker about it a little. But that thing that happened in San Francisco ten years ago, still isn’t funny to him. Maybe when he’s eligible for social security?
expensive mistakes are by default major mistakes if you don’t have the money to spare. otherwise they’re just another life lesson.
that incident in SF must have cost a fortune.
I rehash old mistakes when I’m in my cups, otherwise they’re done and forgotten. and I get over the ones that cost me money much more quickly than those that cost me a friend, or caused someone an injury (mental or physical).
Oh, how I long for a tankless water heater!
Bob, oddly the SF incident cost less, but it had an element of foreshadowing to it that made it more difficult to recover from, the always anticipated, though not actualized “I told you so.”
******
De, we will want in solidarity.