Two Bits

Civilization 101

When everything works, it’s great. I live in a perfect cocoon, insulated from all of life’s little irritants – floods, for example. Under ordinary circumstances, I turn on the tap, and voila! Out it comes! I flush the toilet, and whoosh! No mess, no problem! That is, until the water main breaks…

 

5:45 – The alarm goes off, and I stagger to the bathroom. The toilet won’t flush. I check and see that there is hardly any water in the tank. There is water in the kitchen, but there isn’t much pressure. I’ll have to stop at the office on the way to work and ask what’s up. I find that it’s a bit of a challenge to brush my teeth without water, but it’s an even greater challenge to take a dry shower. Fortunately, I’m not too dirty.  

 

It’s 6:45 a.m., and the buzzer in my condo goes off. It can’t be anyone I know, but I answer it, and ask who is there. A man’s voice, blurred by static, says something I don’t catch, and I’ll be darned if I’ll let someone I don’t know into the building. We’ve had some break-ins in the storage units in the basements. A bit later, the buzzer goes off again. I can hear the buzzers for other units in the background. Can’t figure out what’s going on, but I don’t want to open the door. I live in a very safe area, but I’m not expecting anyone, and I don’t know who it could be. A couple of minutes later, there is a knock on my door. It’s ‘J’ in 101. ‘J’ Paul Revere says that there is a water main break and the basement garage is flooding. He is galloping from door to door, spreading the alarm. He says that if I have a car down there that I had better get it out.

 

I have more than a car down there. I have an enclosed storage unit filled with my worldly possessions. I’m still in my pjs, but I grab my keys, slip into my sandals, and rush down to the garage. Sure enough, there are about 18” of dirty water sloshing around the concrete pillars, miscellaneous household items, and cars. Fortunately, I’m wearing my plastic ‘go to the office’ shoes and my pajamas are above my knees. I wade to my car, which is the next to the last in the garage. (’How high’s the water, mama?’ Johnny Cash knows that it’s ‘two feet high and risin’.) I drive my trusty Subaru to safety and hope that the flood will have receded by the time I get home from work. I need to evaluate the damage. 

 

But wait! There’s more! It’s raining like crazy, and now I’ve got water coming in from above, too. I put a towel down to sop up the rain that’s seeping in over my sliding glass balcony door and go to work. The fact that a friend from out of state is coming in this afternoon doesn’t do a whole lot to improve my disposition. Most of the time Americans can ignore it, but really, nothing has changed since the beginning of time. Even today, the forces of nature are stronger than the strongest barriers we puny humans can erect against them.