I was at work at Fort Lewis, one day in the middle of November, when I got a call from my wife at home. Now men, if you’ve ever been married or if you are currently married, you will know exactly what type of call that was. That was a ‘drop everything and rush right home, I have a 9-1-1 emergency that you have to take care of right now!’ See, to wives everything is a ‘drop everything and rush right home emergency.’ If there is a problem that you have to fix as the husband, it is automatically an emergency. It doesn’t matter how small the problem might be. For example, a lightbulb might have burnt out in one of the rooms. Those kinds of things happen. Is it an emergency? Well, the subject is open to debate to everyone but your wife. To your wife, it is an open and shut case. That burnt out lightbulb constitutes an emergency. Trust me, you will not win that argument. Don’t even bother to start it. You will lose. When you hear one simple little phrase, “We have a problem.” Translated, that really means I have an emergency and you need to get home right now. Let’s assume that the emergency is something on a grander scale. Let’s assume that you have a small child. Let’s also assume that your small child has some toys like for instance a ball. Let’s say that said ball is small enough to fit down inside the hole of the toilet. Do you know where I’m going with this? If you don’t, it will become painfully obvious in a minute. Let’s also assume that your child sticks the ball down into that hole to see if it will fit. Guess what? It does. Let’s also assume that your child is old enough, say three or four, so that he or she knows what the flush lever does on the toilet. Oh yeah. We’re going to go there. He or she flushes the toilet to see what happens next. Can you guess what happens next? If the toilet doesn’t overflow, and that’s a big if, it will at least be blocked by said ball. Someone asked what ball? Try to stay awake. Remember we talked about the ball a little while ago. The kid put the ball in the toilet to start with. That ball. Yeah. But more than likely, the toilet will overflow. Now what? So, if you’re lucky and you have a two-story or split-level house and the bathroom with the clogged toilet is downstairs the flood happens to the bathroom, the rec room, and possibly the laundry room. That’s if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky and you’re in that two-story or split-level house and a flood occurs upstairs, then you’ve got a helluva mess on your hands. It’s just water, so it will dry over time. Or you can run to the Safeway and rent a machine to suck up the water from the carpet. Bear in mind, this is still going to be an emergency job that you have to fix right now. But don’t forget that ball that’s in the toilet. Someone asked what ball again? Seriously? Try to keep up. Cuz your job ain’t done until that ball is out of that toilet. And the only way that ball is coming out of that toilet is to pull that toilet off of the floor and tip it upside down and let gravity get that ball out. Generally, when you drain all of the water out of the toilet and pull the toilet off of the floor and tip it upside down, the ball falls right out. Yes. I speak from experience. I have had to do that a time or two. But when I answered the phone this time, I got the feeling that the emergency was of a slightly different nature. My wife sounded kinda scared and nervous on the phone. She asked me if I could come home right away. When I asked why, she just said that there was something wrong with her car. I asked what was wrong with her car. But she was being pretty vague. She just said, “I don’t know? There is something wrong with my car.” Okay then. That really narrows it down. So, after the obligatory “can this wait until I come home tonight question,” and the immediate “no,” response, I headed for the house. When I got to the house, I pretty much identified the emergency as soon as I pulled into my driveway. My wife had apparently gone somewhere today in her Pontiac T1000, which is a rather small car by car standards. And when she came home, she had attempted to park her car in the garage. The garage was a one-car garage. But it was no ordinary one-car garage. I had it built as an oversized one-car garage to house a vehicle as big as a mini-RV. It also had an oversized 10-foot garage door. I could easily park my red Chevy van inside that garage with plenty of room on both sides without pulling in the mirrors. Why am I giving you all of this detail? The devil is in the details. Have you ever heard that expression? Well, right next to where I had that one-car oversized garage built sat what used to be the two-car garage to my house. I had the two-car garage closed in and converted to a family room. Why? Cuz I converted the old family room into the master bedroom complete with its own bathroom. Now, in the new family room, I installed an Orley wood-burning stove. I had the installer run the chimney out into the garage and up through the roof. I did not want a chimney inside the house. Additionally, it was easier to get the permit with that kind of an installation plan. How she did it, I will never know. But she managed to pull into the garage at an angle so that the right front fender of her Pontiac T1000 swept the metal anchor plate for the base of the chimney and scraped the car’s fender against it. She realized her mistake right away, so she only put a slight surface scratch into the paint for about two inches. But she was terrified to death. She was afraid to move the car. I showed her how to undo it. I got into the car and I started the engine. I turned the steering wheel hard to the right and I put the car in reverse. I backed up ever so slightly and the front end of the car swung to the left away from the chimney. Then, I backed the car out of the garage. I spent an hour polishing compound and buffing out the scratch that she had put into the paint. Problem solved. Somehow my wife had managed to sweep the chimney with her car, thereby creating an exercise in futility, but nothing a little polishing compound couldn’t solve.
by 
by 
I really liked your blog post. Really looking forward to read more. Great. Brigid Doug Rheta