Drop In The Bucket

Although the weather really sucked with the passing of Hurricane Ana, the good news is no one was seriously hurt. Still, there was a lot of rain and flooding, so no one really came away from it unscathed. I know my family didn’t, and let me tell you why.

No question that, in my house, I am the voice of calm and reason.

I sometimes get in trouble for that, as my wife mistakes it for apathy. I just think that getting all worked up merely makes the problem worse. It may make a person feel better to vent their concerns, but I prefer to sit back and calmly assess a situation before jumping to any conclusion or panicking.

On the Friday night when we were hit hardest by Ana, I woke the next morning to the sound of my wife in distress.

I jumped out of bed and ran to the kitchen, where the noise was coming from. Apparently, rain had leaked through our kitchen roof, and the ceiling plaster had peeled off and was all over the counters and floor. There was water everywhere.

My wife had reason to be upset, the place was a mess and it was still raining, so the roof continued to leak.

I figured I needed to be the pillar of strength, and so I calmly started to help her clean up the mess. She had spread out dish towels to sop up the water, and I was trying to sweep up the ceiling plaster with my bare hands.

She said, “Ron what are we going to do? It’s still raining and the ceiling could cave in at any minute! Do something!”

If this was a movie and she was a man, this is the point where someone would slap him to snap out of it. I would never raise a hand to her, not even in a movie, but I wanted you to gauge her panic.

In my most calming Morgan Freeman voice, I said, “Everything will be all right.”

Then she showed me that our rice cooker on the counter was completely ruined. That’s when I fell apart, as that was a true emergency.

rnagasawa@midweek.com