What was I doing here? Looking around, I saw only smooth white plastic walls, translucent in the autumn sunlight. I wasn’t trapped, not exactly…but I wasn’t going anywhere either.
I’d been minding my own business on a lovely fall afternoon, innocently spreading compost on my garden when my ever-loving husband called.
I trotted over to the 1,000-gallon tank used to store water for the drip irrigation system Dick set up for our gardens this summer. He’d just finished the difficult job of draining it except for the last goopy standing water in its bottom.
He needed to insert a plug in the drainage hole. Unfortunately that chore needed to be done from the tank’s inside.
“I’ll get in to do it, but I need something for climbing out. Do we have a little ladder or something that will fit in this hole?”
I ran to the house and brought out the stool used at our snack bar.
It didn’t fit. “Maybe something else,” I suggested and retrieved an old-fashioned wood stepstool, but its legs were also too widely spaced to lower into the tank.
The tank had to be plugged. But how?
Suddenly I felt Dick looking at me like a lion eyeballing a limping wildebeest. “Oh no, you don’t,” I said.
He studied the opening then turned to scan my shoulder width. “I think you’d fit in easily,” he said. “And I can pull you out.”
My first response. “Are you sure?” My second reponse. “I don’t think so.”
“No problem. You’d fit. I won’t have any trouble pulling you out. Are you claustrophobic?”
I wasn’t, but the idea still didn’t thrill me.
He argued. “Remember when we lived on Tucker Lake and moved that huge refrigerator by canoe over two lakes and the portage, just the two of us? I made a sledge and hooked you up to pull from the front while I pushed from the back. This is nothing compared to that.”
“That was over forty years ago.”
But I was weakening. The longer we debated, the more I realized that I was the solution to the problem. If anything happened to me, Dick would have to live with his conscience.
Carefully I lowered myself into the tank and dropped to its floor. I knelt, plugged the hole and called to the opening above.
“You better be able to lift me. I won’t be happy if I have to spend the rest of my life in here.”
Ha. Ha.
I held up my arms. He reached down, hitched his arms under my shoulders and pulled. It didn’t work. He’d lifted me a few inches but couldn’t maintain his grip and was forced to let go and drop me. I wasn’t exactly worried, but… “Try again, dear.”
Dick took a few deep breaths. I prepared to jump, and we gave it another go. Better, but not enough. The third time, I managed to gain a foothold on an indentation in the tank wall. Dick gave a mighty heave, and we got enough upward momentum for him to pull me through the hole.
“I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things.” I was greatly relieved.
As he leaned over, catching his breath, I continued. “When we moved that huge refrigerator by canoe over two lakes I never contemplated divorce, but I did consider homicide.”
“But you did a great job.”
His back hurt for at least a week.
Karma.
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