Listen to your wife, by Doug McVadon

It started with the strange gurgling sound from the downstairs toilet. The sound of a day going down the drain, I would later say, but at the moment it was just unusual.

On her way out to Union County Melinda said, “Shut the lid.”

How lame, I thought, shut the toilet lid to prevent overflowing? Doesn’t she know there’s a big gap between the seat and the toilet?

I heard it again, as we both watched the big white truck with the green sign saying Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utility stopped in front of our house. Two men bundled against the cold—it had been 25º at dawn—gripped an orange hose on a reel and fed it into the sewer drain they’d taken the lid off of. I waved bye to Melinda, and looking at the truck, she shouted through the passenger window to me, “Shut the lid!” Walking back inside, I muttered to myself, “Whatever, okay, I’ll close it.”

A few minutes later I heard a new sound, pouring water, no…spraying water! My god, the water is coming out of the toilet like a fountain. I ran into the hall and saw the water pooling on the floor. I probably took two steps in four different directions as my panic spread. Melinda is gone, was my first thought, as I tried to think which towels NOT to use for the floor. It was like a fountain from the toilet, and thank god I had shut the lid. She had obviously been through this before, but spared me the details and just left me with SHUT THE LID. And if I hadn’t, the water would’ve flowed out of the bathroom and down the hall and been soaked up by the carpet in the den…oh the smell…but that didn’t happen.

Disaster averted, and it was only 10 a.m. I went to my car and turned the key. Nothing.

Oh yeah, Melinda had mentioned my lights were still on when she had gotten home last night. But I didn’t remember to get off the couch. You are kidding me. Two hours ago I had found the note on the desk, RENEW AAA, and I had! I picked up the phone and gave my info and the lady told me I’d get a free month next year and did I have any questions? “When does this take effect?” I asked, thinking of our annual Christmas journey next week to Washington. “About this time tomorrow. Is that okay? “Oh, that’s fine, I don't need it today!” So when that key turned silently, this didn’t feel like a mistake, it felt like karma coming back. Why don’t I listen?

Middle of the morning, I can’t stop and deal with this now! I decide to let my dead car sit there in the driveway until later. It feels radical, not to work on the car problem.

I walk into the backyard and think about how I have collapsed the act of leaving in my car with the act of working. What if I had to get everything done from right here? Pioneers had to make it where they stood; they couldn’t just drive away to where somebody else had it figured out. Hardly a pioneer, I nonetheless had an energized feeling of independence simply by declaring to myself that my inability to instantly change my location does NOT equal an inability to work!

After I finished two client calls and completed a sales proposal, I considered my options. I could “start calling around” to see who could help me. Or I could focus and conjure up a one-call solution. I called Mike, my realtor friend. After all it was his JOB to drive around town, and he probably had jumper cables. “Sure, I have jumper cables, and yes, I can help you.”

The conjuring worked. I waited patiently and soon I heard the sound of metal clips dragging on asphalt and metal hoods creaking open. He met my new dog over the backyard fence, then got my car started. Painless, free and without effort I was mobile again. All I did was restore the previous state, but it felt like a breakthrough.

Now I could go get a haircut, which turned out to be the only activity on my schedule that actually required a car. I told the stylist my water and car stories, saying the lesson was to shut my mouth and shut the lid, and she corrected me, “No, the lesson is listen to your wife!”

It was after the haircut, while my wet head was draped backwards into the black plastic basin designed for shampooing, that I heard the news about Sandy Hook. My plumbing and auto “emergencies” had not been the news of the day, but they had kept me from the radio and TV. The woman who had commented that she was at the salon just for a shampoo was now saying, “It’s so horrible, another one.” Uh-oh, my brain said to myself, that sounds bad.

She continued, saying something about twenty people shot at a school…not here, up in the Northeast….but her voice became faint as the one in my head got louder…NO, NO, NO….don’t wanna go there, don’t want to start feeling like everything is dangerous and hopeless because something horrible happened a thousand miles away…I was glad I didn’t have my glasses on and my head was back so I closed my eyes…I had an excuse not to engage, I couldn’t really see her clearly…I resisted opening my eyes, I did not want to hear the details, I did not want to look, much less to see….my brain was rising to defend me from the onslaught of emotion and fear and disgust…who are these demons that call themselves people….like the movie theater thing, or the mall thing, of all the other school things…

“I don’t like Mondays,” said the girl in San Diego to explain why she picked off her classmates with a rifle. We have so many of these it seems like a career path in America…when I grow up I’ll shoot a bunch of people and be famous forever…that was our game on the playgrounds of my childhood, cowboys and Indians, Yankees against rebels, GIs against Nazis, and the name of the game is gunning down the enemy, the enemy that was our friend a minute ago, and now there is no greater thrill than pretending to kill them, after all that is how you win the game, you kill the other ones.

What do we mean we can’t understand the suicide bombers in the Middle East? At least they have a cause!

We have our own suicide killers with no cause except their own inner story, the classic misunderstood anti-hero – you don’t know me, you can’t know me, until after I kill what is precious to you and take my own life to prevent you from that satisfaction…killing innocent people to satisfy some personal psychological need, it is the ultimate terrorism…from within.

And here I was thinking I was having a “bad day” because water came shooting out of my toilet and my car wouldn’t start. Good thing I hadn’t said that out loud.