Sunday, June 12, 2011

An I Love Lucy Moment

We've all had those moments when we've done something totally stupid, something like Lucy Ricardo would've done on the old I Love Lucy show. If you're too young to remember that show, you've missed out on some great comedy.

I'll start this story with a fact about me that you may not know—I'm very full busted. That plays a big part in my tale.

My late husband, Harry, and I moved from Sacramento, California to Olympia, Washington in 1996. His son, Little Harry (whose name never made sense to me since he's 6'1"), owned a house in Forks (yes, the town of Twilight fame) that was currently empty, so told us we could store all our household belongings in it until we got settled in a place to live. It was a cute little house with a second story that contained two small bedrooms and a bath. Little Harry was currently remodeling the house, so it was pretty much a mess upstairs.

A couple of weeks after we arrived in Washington, we drove up to the house in Forks to get some of our stuff. It was pouring rain. Forks is on the edge of a rain forest and gets a lot of rain per year. We walked in the back door of the house and heard water running. Let me rephrase that. We heard water gushing and it had nothing to do with the rain outside.

A pipe had burst in the upstairs bathroom beneath the sink and water was literally dripping down the walls and through the ceiling. So we whipped out our cell phone and prayed we could reach Little Harry in Olympia to tell him what happened and find out how to turn off the water. Remember, this was 1996, so cell phones barely had a strong enough signal to call the neighbor, let alone 100 miles away. Luckily, we were able to reach him and he told us where the lever was located to turn off the water. It was under the house, which meant going out in the pouring rain.

I was elected for the job. Harry had had a stroke in 1994 that affected his legs, so him crawling beneath a house wasn't even an option. With the help of a flashlight, we found the little white lever. Hooray! All I had to do was pull it forward a couple of inches and the water would turn off. So I get on the ground in the mud and scooch backward on my back in the narrow space between the ground and the bottom of the house to get to the lever. I'm within an inch (literally) of reaching it when (yep, you guessed it) my boobs came up against the house. I can't go any farther. I'm stretching and squirming to reach that lever just off my fingertips, but my boobs won't let me move.

Of course, Harry is leaning down watching me and laughing like crazy. I put up with his snickering for a few moments, then informed him it was up to him to figure out what to do. After laughing a little longer, he went in the house and came back with a wire clothes hanger. I hooked it around the lever and pulled forward. Viola! Water off, job complete.

Do you have one of those I Love Lucy moments? Tell me about it. I love a good laugh.

Lynn

10 comments:

Regina Carlysle said...

Oh Lynn, that's too too funny. I can just imagine that.

NikkiS said...

Niiice, Lynn. I never met Harry, but I can just imagine him chortling over it. Personally, I can't recall any Lucy-Moments. Well...except for this one time when I tried my hand at selling Vitameatavegamin. LOL

Cait Miller said...

What a great story Lynn! LOL I'm nightshift so my brain isn't working well enough to think of anything but if I do I'll share :)

Ruby Storm said...

Here's one. Very early in our marriage of bliss (ahem...please note sarcasm here)it was a Friday night. My hubby got off a 10 day shift and instead of coming home...you guessed it hopefully...he decided to stop with his crew at a local pub. Okay, there WAS no such thing as cellphones 35 years ago. My sista, Sweet Sue, knew I was pissed so we decided to go to the pub and see what the hell was going on. I was so so pissed. The bar was shaped in a "U" so we sat on one end, totally ignoring him. He knew I was there and was trying to figure out how the hell he was going to crawl out of that big doghouse he'd just built throughout the evening. Now picture this. He's on the other side. I ordered drinks for me and Sue as the idiot is trying to talk to me across the expanse. My nose is in the air. So he's going, "hey! Don't be mad." Then the freakin idiot takes off his baseball cap and tosses it across just as I'm sipping my first sip. Damn! The hat lands perfectly on my head, only a bit cockeyed and the entire bar explodes with laughter. Sue is sitting next to me near choking but scared to death I'm going to belt her. It's funny because at that moment she goes (under her breath) "Lucy...you got some 'splaining to do". What's life if you can't laugh at yourself? I not only mentally helped him to de-construct the doghouse but took his hand and led him out of it! Oh well, thanks Lynn for a great reminder that sometimes we just have to put aside our emotions and go with the flow!
Rubes :) (and it's 36 years later on June 20th and I'm still married to him!)

Lynn LaFleur said...

Great story, Ruby! Thanks for the giggles.

Lynn

Tara Nina said...

Lynn and Ruby, Great stories. I've got one to share. A typical Lucy/Ethel event if ever there was one. My daughter (Casey), my BF Sue and I were going to the mall. My trailblazer started acting up so we decided to take a shortcut back to the house since we live in the middle of nowhere and switch to Sue's car. But we didn't make it before the car died. Luckily we were in an area that had cell service so I called my hubby all in a panic. Blonde moment coming here (but Sue's not blonde). I tell him the car is broken down and asked if he could come get us. Also, Sue and I couldn't figure out how to open the doors because they were power locks. (NO lie and I wasn't even drunk, duh.) Total brain fart. While I'm on the phone listening to my husband howl on his end. Someone taps on Sue's window, we look up and it's Casey standing there laughing at us. Because all you have to do is pull the lock switch to unlock and it will open. You can't pull the handle, you have to pull the switch for the lock. Granted, Sue and I are still trying to live that one down.
And it will be 22 years on July 21 for me and Mister I can't help you with the lock because I'm laughing too hard :O

Nina Pierce said...

When I was about 7 months pregnant with our youngest we bought a house and were redoing the baby's bedroom. It was a very old house with strapping running perpendicular to the ceiling beams. My husband is a big guy and couldn't squeeze through the small spaces to roll out the insulation, but even pregnant I could. And all was good until it was time to come down. One of the old white knobs for the original wiring got caught up under my belly and I couldn't go down. But I started laughing so hard, I couldn't go back up and get my belly up and over it either. Mr. Nina was pulling on my feet trying to help me down, which of course caught me more and made me laugh harder.

It's 27 years for us this year. As you can imagine there are many "Lucy" moments through the years.

Thanks for the laughs, Lynn.

N.J.Walters said...

ROFL Wonderful story, Ruby.

Dalton Diaz said...

Um, daily. LOL!
One biggie along the same lines (& I can't believe I'm posting this!):
I was baptized as an adult, and we're talking they brought a full tub in, and you and the priest stood in waist deep water, where he bent you backwards over his arm for full submersion. I was up first out of 7 people. We all donned bathing suits and long brown robes and walked down the aisle of a huge Easter vigil crowd. We did our thing one by one and walked back up the aisle to don white robes and join the crowd.
One week later I saw pics of me, glowing in my 5 minutes of sinlessness, dripping wet except for two very dry spots where my boobs had stuck up too far to go under.

DD
(Needless to say, it's not just a pen name!)
www.DaltonDiaz.com

ajbarnett said...

Wow - you certainly took me back a few years with 'I Love Lucy' - nice one. Made me smile.