I bought a house a few years back as I got a little tired of people visiting my apartment every fifteen minutes when I was home during the day. It was the landlord or the maintenance guy with some kind of upgrade which was supposed to improve my lifestyle and of course it never did. There were constant knocks at the door with offers to sell me something or save me from something else. I wasn’t into being sold or saved or maintenanced and most days I just wanted to be left alone. I put a “BEWARE OF DOG” sign by the front walk and dog bowl the size of a small pool on the stoop. This discouraged just about everybody except the people from my town who like to inconvenience me for my convenience.
They sent me a letter a few weeks back to let me know that they would be changing my water meter. The letter informed me that my meter was old technology and the change would help to better monitor my water usage and was guaranteed to not leak as the old meters were known to do. This improvement would save me money and water. They said it would only take a “few minutes” and it would be done at “my convenience.” When my house was built in the 1970s, they could have put the meter on the outside right next to the other meter that spins like a Makita circular saw when I have the air conditioning on; to make my life easier, the builder put the water meter in a musty corner of the garage where darkness and big spiders lurk. Every garage has a corner like this where even hardcore Jehovah’s witnesses would never go and that's exactly why I put a free standing tool shelf blocking the corner.
I called the town and they said it would be a ‘five minute’ deal. I could spare five minutes but when something is supposed to take five minutes, I inevitably need a soft drink, a sandwich and a shave before its over. There were five minutes of preparations I needed to do before the actual five minute appointment. My options were somewhat limited and I had no choice but to open wide and take my medicine like a sick child.
It's always best to have a plan and my degree in literature had prepared me for situations such as this one. The first step was to create a plan which also had steps. Step two was to take action on step one of my plan and that first step of was to make sure I could turn my water off. The water valve is right below the meter in the corner of the garage behind the shelf. I imagined it was filled with bugs of all shapes and sizes that would make me scream like a five-year who dropped her ice cream cone. I closed my eyes and sacrificed my hand expecting to find an old rusty valve; surprisingly, the valve seemed freshly painted and turned with very little effort. Water off? Check. I pulled my arm back and opened my eyes and the corner was oddly well lit and there weren’t the cobwebs I thought I would find. I scratched my head because things were moving much better than anticipated. Until I felt something crawling across my hand and
EEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH
That's the sound my neighbors told me the heard coming from the garage and by the time they were gathered at the door looking for the screaming child, I was smashing my hand with a rubber mallet. A few minutes later, I was bandaged up to my armpit and ready for step three.
Step three was to schedule the appointment. Any step expert will tell you that when step two concludes with blood coming out of your ears, step three should be to call a plumber and take a nap on the couch. I didn’t have a step expert on retainer so I pressed forward. This step should have been a breeze but I didn’t realize the difficulty of scheduling until I was on hold for twenty minutes waiting for a customer service representative. When I awoke from my slumber after hearing, “Hello? Hello. Is anybody there?” it was time to schedule my five minute appointment. I work from nine to five and the water people work from nine to five, which sounds perfect but its the complete opposite of perfect. It couldn't be less perfect or more imperfect; it was perfectly imperfect. I can’t take any time off or do long lunches and they can’t work past five pm. Through deft use of my honed negotiation skills which involved a lot of begging and a little crying, I secured a coveted Saturday appointment. The Saturday appointment with the ninety minute time window is the red cup filled to the brim with beer of water department appointments.
Rather than hang around all morning and wait for the water meter guy, I ran a few errands and found him waiting for me when I arrived home. Not only did I have the time slot of all time slots, but the guy was sitting on my stoop next to the dog bowl as I rolled up. Just five minutes and I would get back to my regular life.
The water guy determined that although I had turned a valve and it did turn the water off, it was the wrong valve; the right valve was beyond the wall which required mister sledge hammer. After we hosed the blood off of it from step two, we used the hammer to break down the wall where the secret valve was lurking. As luck would have it, the valve was frozen even though it was ninety degrees outside and I had to either invest in a plumber to the tune of $400, or rent a one of those geeky metal detectors and find the emergency shut off valve buried somewhere on the front lawn.
Thirty-five bucks later, I was walking around my lawn like I was on Miami Beach searching for buried treasure. The guy from the water company told me where to begin to look and after twenty minutes, which is four more five minute periods if you're counting, I located and uncovered the valve. The water company was going to show up the following Saturday to shut off the water and perform the now infamous five minute meter change. Saturday came and went as did the water company who had snapped the valve on the lawn and created my own personal water spout complete with pond. An official looking guy with a clip board told me “there’s nothing we can do. You’re lucky it was us who broke it. The backhoe will be here Monday morning.”
By Monday, my front lawn had ducks on it and my neighbor was building a dock for his kids to dive off of. I got a ticket from the local sheriff for having a backhoe parked on the street in a no backhoe parking zone and my lawn looked like Mount Saint Helens after the eruption. The “five-minute water meter change” cost about three weeks, a $150 emergency room deductible and a couple thousand gallons of water which I got a nifty bill for. I did get a moat out of it which keeps strangers from knocking on my door on Saturday morning. Within a few years, my bill should be paid off, and my lawn and hand should be back to normal. Until then, I’m selling pellets so tourists can feed the ducks from my new dock.
a decidedly myopic rehashing of the not so obvious... Seinfeld should have thought of it
