12.8.08

Right Place Right Time

Last Wednesday, Natalie and I were at a combined Young Men's and Young Womens activity at a member's house in the ward when the Brian Warburton (our Executive Secretary) came running down the street to where we were at. He told Natalie that our neighbors the Nelsons had called looking for us. He told us that a sprinkler head had broken and the water was flooding into our basement. I ran to the car and drove home.

The Nelsons were sitting on our porch when I pulled up, and I could not see any sprinklers on or any geysers springing up from the lawn. Tim told me how he had gone outside to mow the lawn, and he saw water spewing from a broken head 4 feet in the air and down into our window well. Obviously nobody was home and he had no way to access the garage to shut off the sprinklers. This is where most people would throw up their hands and say, "oh well, I tried."

My good neighbors then started going around to other neighbors to try to find a key that would shut off the main line going to the sprinklers. They found one at the Nixon's house. Tim then proceeded to locate the small shaft in our front lawn and turned off the water with the Nixon's key. With the water stopped, brother and sister Nelson proceeded to bail out the water from our window well until it had receded past the flooding point.

Within an hour, our young men's president Mike Hebertson showed up and offered to help fix the sprinkler. He surveyed the damage with me, went home, returned with the necessary parts, and proceeded to show me how to fix the problem so it would not happen again. Ten minutes later, my sprinkler was working like a charm. When I went down to survey the damage, I was surprised to find that only a little water had made its way in. Nothing was damaged or smelly.

Lesson learned: if you can't be good, be lucky. If you can't be lucky, make sure you live next to really nice neighbors.

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