Did you ever feel like a slow swimming tuna in a school of
sharks? You know the feeling I’m talking about, when it feels like the whole
world is circling around waiting their turn to take a bite out of your
backside. No? Maybe it’s just me…let me tell you about my week.
It all started about a week ago when my wife called me at
work. That may not seem alarming to most of you but when you consider that the
last time Sandra called me at work it was to tell me that “my” sixteen year-old
son had been arrested for drinking; so when she calls I brace for shock.
This time she called to tell me that there was water flooding
our kitchen from the light fixture on the ceiling. As I drove home to
investigate I wasn’t too worried because we are renting our place in Florida,
no matter how bad it was I knew I just had to call the landlord. No big
deal…right?
Sure enough the kitchen was flooded and it seemed obvious
that we had developed a leak in the upstairs bathroom that had found its way
through the floor and into the kitchen below. The plumber tightened a few
fittings and said to call if we had any more issues.
The next day I had an appointment for a dental check up.
Again, normally no big deal since I have had perfect teeth most of my life, but
it was a bit worrisome when after the exam the dentist said, “The good news is
that I’m pretty sure we can save most of your teeth.”
It seems that the radiation treatment that had killed my
throat cancer had destroyed my dental health. In the first 54 years of my life
I had one cavity and in the last year I developed 38 more. That’s not a typo…I
had more cavities than I have teeth.
Fortunately through the magic of modern dentistry they could
salvage my dazzling smile, unfortunately it was going to cost me about $10,000
after my insurance had paid its portion. But wait…there’s more!
As I was heading home to tell Sandra that the money we were
saving for a trip to the Bahamas was now going to be spent on several trips to
the dentist; she called to tell me that her car had broken down and I needed to
meet her at a local garage.
Once again, this wouldn’t have been a big deal…if her car
had not been trouble free from the day we bought it and our upstairs bathroom
hadn’t mysteriously flooded our kitchen and I had not just been told that my
heretofore perfect mouth would be setting off metal detectors for the rest of
my life…but all that had just happened and I was starting to develop a complex.
A couple of days and several hundred bucks later her car was
back on the road, the kitchen had stopped dripping and I had decided that
surviving cancer was worth a few cavities. Things seemed to have settled down
enough for me to go on a business trip…not so fast!
I had not been back to Nevada in almost a year so I was a
bit taken aback to arrive at our family home to find a few minor repairs
waiting for me; the front yard needs weeding, the backyard sprinklers were not
working, the hot tub was broken and a 20 foot section of our privacy fence was gone…that’s
about when the bad stuff started happening.
My son had been having a problem with his knee so I drove
him to see his orthopedic surgeon. It turns out that he needs a serious knee
surgery and he has lousy insurance so he needs a couple of grand for the
surgery and someone to take care of him for five weeks after.
I think that’s about the time I noticed that I had developed
a kind of nervous twitch and started ordering bourbon with my breakfast. What
else could go wrong?
About then Sandra called to tell me that she would be happy
to come home and stay with our son after his surgery because the kitchen
ceiling in our Florida home had just collapsed. Apparently the leak the plumber
couldn’t find had rotted the ceiling supports and it finally gave way. I didn’t
say anything…I just twitched.
Tonight when I sat down to write this column my computer quit
working…seriously, it completely shit itself. To paraphrase Jimmy Buffett,
“I’ve got fins to the left, fins to the right and I’m the only bait in town!”
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