Photography And Half-Thoughts By Mitchell Hegman

...because some of it is pretty and some of it is not.

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

The Third Thing


In a blog posted only five days ago, I wrote about my boiler and my hot tub both giving up the ghost within a two-day period.  “What’s the third thing?” my friend, Kevin, asked when I told him about those.
Everyone recognizes that things fail in groups of three.
On Sunday, while at my cabin collecting some firewood, I thought about the “third thing” as I pull-started my chain saw.  That girl entertained the very same thought as she watched me struggling to bring the saw engine to life.  Fortunately, the saw eventually sputtered to life and ran flawlessly for the entire day.
Yesterday, the third thing finally broke.  Another water-related contrivance failed spectacularly. 
As that girl and I sat drinking coffee, we heard the water softening system kick on in the laundry room.  During one stage of the process, the system banged loudly and then sounded like it was pumping marbles against a snare drum.  “Geez, that’s quite a racket,” that girl noted. 
“Yeah,” I replied, “it has always been loud like that...at least since I upgraded the system about eight years ago.  Not sure what the deal is.”
“That would be scary in the middle of the night.”
“I know.  My cats plastered themselves against the door the first time they heard it.”
After a couple more sips of her coffee—filled with a mix of curiosity and suspicion—that girl headed to the laundry room.  She yelped the second she entered the room.  “Mitch, you need to get in here right away.  Water is squirting everywhere!”
The third thing turned out to be a broken water line on the water softening system and an indoor flood.

--Mitchell Hegman

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