Adam Oster, Novelist

I like to consider myself a pretty handy guy. In fact, just a few weeks ago, the dryer absolutely stopped working and I was able to take the whole thing apart, figure out the issue, order a couple of new parts, and within a week had the thing back up and running, with less than an hour of my own time invested in the event. We had a dishwasher fail on us a number of years ago, and while I was pretty confident on what was wrong, we decided to call someone out, because it was new and we didn’t want to have to deal with fixing something so new. The guy came out, spent far more time asking me what I thought was wrong with it. I finally sent him away, ordered the part I expected was the issue, took the whole thing apart, replaced the part, and the thing worked like a charm for as long as we had the house (I would expect it still works, but can’t verify that at the moment).

I fix things rather often. It’s something I feel pretty happy with myself about, especially considering how my granddaddy was renown for his prowess in fixing things, and I feel like I can confidently say I keep that family tradition alive. My dad is also pretty good at fixing what’s broken, so one could say that I’ve got a nice ancestry for keeping things working that don’t want to be working.

But there’s one place in which I simply can’t seem to make things happen, and that’s when it comes to those darn pipes that carry water in and out of my house.

For the past couple of years, since we bought our new house, we’ve had trouble with one particular part of our plumbing, that I’ve been slowly working on fixing, and continually thinking that I might have actually managed to fix on a number of occasions, only for the entire basement to wind up flooded yet again and I end up spending another day not only trying to mop up water, but also trying to figure out how to fix the issue.

Yet, for some reason, I’ve never called a plumber. In my years and years of absolutely hating plumbing work, I’ve never called a plumber. My wife has called on my behalf a number of times, but I simply haven’t been able to take the knock to my own pride and make the phone call myself…until today.

Today is the day where, after another whole day was spent this past weekend trying to unclog this particularly clogged pipe that we’ve been struggling with for years, I finally decided I simply couldn’t do it, and I, yes I myself, actually called the plumber.

In fact, he’s sitting here in my house as we speak, tearing apart my plumbing, and my guess is (and my hope, because I know these guys aren’t exactly cheap) that he’ll be done in an hour with something I have spent countless hours dealing with. And he’ll also probably cost far less than I’ve already spent on tools and cleaning products and items that have been destroyed because of a flooded basement.

In other words, if it weren’t for my own damned pride, I could have had a lot fewer struggles in my life these past two years, and probably even a little more money.

Instead, it has taken me two years, and I’m now, finally, expecting that this whole situation will be dealt with before I even finish my coffee this morning.

Which, I guess, is a little bittersweet.

I mean, I’m super excited about being done with this plumbing situation, but far less excited about the fact that I simply can’t figure out plumbing.

Maybe someday…but honestly, now that I’ve made my first official call to the plumber, I might be far less reticent to do so next time.