Jackie Wells-Fauth
Do I strike you as the kind of person who would be too stubborn to admit that they can’t do something? Yeah, you’re right, I am stubborn; sometimes to the point of stupidity and that’s a terrible flaw. It causes me some trouble.
Roy has had some health issues lately, but it doesn’t affect his eyesight at all. And because his eyes are fine, he could look up at the house eaves and see twigs, leaves, etc. sticking out of the gutter. This was not good.
“You’re not getting up on any ladder or the roof, if that’s what you are thinking,” I used my sternest teacher voice. “I don’t want you getting dizzy or something and falling off.”
“But it needs to be cleaned out,” he insisted in that way he has of letting me know that he’s not going to let go of this.
“Fine! I’ll get up there and clean it out,” I replied. I wasn’t drunk or smoking weed or anything, so I don’t understand how that came out of my mouth.
“You?” he scoffed. “Get up on the roof?” He had reason to be skeptical After all, I’ve been known to get a height-related nose-bleed looking off the deck!
But his attitude hit me in my stubborn pride. “Yes, me. I am perfectly capable of scraping a few twigs out of a drain gutter. I am not helpless! I will do it!” The more I insisted that I would do it, the more I wondered how I was going to accomplish that feat.
I took a casual stroll out back to look the situation over and sure enough, there were those treacherous little twigs, waving at me (and laughing, no doubt) from a gutter that now appeared to be excessively high. “Come and get us! We know you can’t!” And this is where “stubborn meets stupid” kicks in.
“I can do it,” I said, with my heart in my throat and a crick in my neck from looking up. After all, the gutter wasn’t THAT high and it wasn’t going to clean itself. I could do this, I stubbornly thought.
“Get the ladder,” I pushed, before I sobered up or regained my sense. After all, I’ve been on the roof before. Okay, so it was when I was younger…much younger…and I still had knees I could crawl on…so I was now pretty freaked out. But still, get the ladder—let us be stubborn or die…or both!
I crawled up on the roof with my cane (not to walk with, I wasn’t walking up there) and sat down to assess my situation. Since there was no other choice, I scooted along the roofing shingles to reach the area with the twigs. Anyone who has seen a shingle knows that “scooting” is a rather grim prospect, but eventually, I made it. However, my trousers will never be the same.
This is where the cane came in. I used the hooked end to scrape out the gutter, from as far away from the edge as the cane would allow. Roy wanted me to check the down spouts. The best I could do was to shove the cane down as far as I could. “They are clear,” I shouted, having no idea if they were.
But now, I had to do the most dangerous thing. I had to get down from the roof, back onto a ladder and get to the ground. It was then that it occurred to me, “Aren’t there people who do this professionally?” What a brilliant thought to have now—I blame the thin air up there.
“Maybe, but we’re done now,” he said.
“I would gladly hire somebody to get me down,” I suggested, knowing that I was going to have to scoot back across the roof, somehow get from the roof to the ladder, and hug the ladder like a long-lost lover as I crawled, rung by rung to the ground. “Don’t firemen rescue cats from trees? This isn’t that much different.”
I did finally make it down…without any rescue equipment or inconvenient falls. And before you tell me how stupid it was, let me tell you that I already know that. So the next time Roy tries to look up and see if there is anything in the gutters, I may just poke him in the eyes!
