A few days before Thanksgiving, something broke on one of the upstairs toilets at my Dad's house and water leaked through the ceiling into the living room on the first floor. It was kind of a mess but didn't destroy Thanksgiving or anything.
Anyway, Dad's next door neighbor is a plumber and he came over and shut off the water to the offending toilet and then proceeded to tell us, in more or less an unbroken monologue, about how his house was once saved from burning down in the middle of the night because there was a tiny hole in a bathroom pipe that spewed out water and extinguished a fire that had started in the bathroom (!!!!). He opined that it would have been extra tragic if he had died in a fire because when he was 12, "both of my grandparents burned up in a fire when they lived next door." He left and later returned with a dehumidifier that he rented for Dad.
Anecdote two:
A cashier at the grocery store told my sister "I haven't seen you in a while." She said he must have her confused with someone else, because she doesn't live there. He said, "Oh no, I remember you. You were in this store eight months ago. The Lord has blessed me with the ability to never forget a face."
The Lord has also blessed him with the ability to win big by card counting in Vegas, but he didn't mention that.
(If for some reason you've never read any Flannery O'Connor, do yourself a huge favor and pick up a copy of her Complete Stories. You won't regret it.)
A Good Blog Post Referring To Flannery O'Connor Is Hard To Find
ReplyDeleteI like it when people from the south refer to people 'getting burned up' in fires. Nice construction there.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the cashier clerk: sounds like someone's getting a little prideful and corrupted-by-satan there, eh? As we all know, only the Lord can perfectly remember faces.