My laundry room flooded several weeks ago. It was the pits! Water everywhere, backed-up sinks, possible floor damage. What a mess!
And it was a beast to fix, too. I had to have lots of pipes flushed out with some big scary tool that gave me nightmares for weeks. Even more tragic, it put a serious dent in my holiday expenditures, not to mention my ability to do wash and wear clean clothes.
Truly, it was awful! AWFUL!!!
Have I made my point? Good. Because now I'd like to tell you the most horrible part about my home disaster, what torqued my turbines most. It appears that my little laundry-room flooding was clearly small potatoes compared to everyone else's MUCH! WORSE! home disaster.
What do I mean by that? I mean that whenever I would bring up my home disaster, it would get immediately trumped by far, far worse home disasters.
Never could I tell my story in toto without it getting interrupted by a home-disaster one-upper. For example...
Me: "Omigod, my entire laundry room flooded a few weeks ago."
One-upper: "You think that's bad? HA! The roof over our bedroom caved in while we were sleeping. We barely made it out of there alive! Since then, we've had to sleep in the unheated basement with mice as big as sock balls. Do you know what it's costing us to fix that roof? Let me put it to you this way, we've suspended all dental work until 2012."
Or...
Me: "Omigod, my entire laundry room flooded a few weeks ago."
One-upper: "You should thank your lucky stars it was just the laundry room. When our pipes burst upstairs, we had to redo every floor in the house. Did you hear me? Every floor. Not just the dinky laundry room - every floor. That's 10 floors. Ten. T.E.N. Fifteen minus five: 10!"
Spare me.
It's not that I don't want to hear another person's sob story - I do. Cry me a river as wide as a contractor's smile. It's just that - right now - I need to be able to unload my entire story without it being diminished by the Worst Home Disaster of the Century. Otherwise, I start to feel like a clogged pipe: all backed up and ready to blow.
So, how do you stifle the urge to one-up another's home-disaster story when the desire to do so is causing your tongue to sweat Tabasco sauce?
As bitter as this may sound, I say: Do whatever it takes! If that means driving a lawn stake through your left foot, drive away. If that means stapling your lips shut with a staple gun, get out the gun.
Sounds harsh, yes, but think of the rewards. By allowing someone to tell his or her home-disaster saga in full, glorious, uninterrupted detail, you'll be planting the seed of "expected silence" during these kinds of outpourings. How wonderful is that?!
But getting back to me: I still have not recovered from the tsunami that swept through my laundry room. In fact, every time I walk by that dreadful room, I think about that horrible day and those frightening pipe-flushing tools that resembled evil eels and the strange glint in Mr. Rooter's eye when he was describing the source of the flooding, and, well, Houston, I think we have a problem.
I'm not going to say what that problem is, but I will say this: Don't stand too close to my family when you see us out.
This column was originally published in Messenger Post Newspapers.
