June 1, 2019

Episode 15

Trapped

After 28 years working on all types of flooring I came in to contact with a fellow who specialized in hardwood flooring. He was looking for someone to help with a show home he had a contract for. I was looking for work at the time and it turned out to be a good fit. It's 24 years later and we continue to install hardwood as a team. It didn't always go smoothly though. I remember one particular day, Pat had gone for supplies and I stayed behind to get some flooring installed. I was going along at a pretty good clip, slamming boards together and nailing them in place. All of a sudden I felt a pain in my left ankle...no, I did not put a nail in my ankle, nor did I hit my ankle with the mallet. What happened was, when I went to move to the next board, my shoelace tightened forcefully at my ankle. I had nailed the lace between two boards. You know those knots that happen and it doesn't matter what you do it just won't come undone, yeah, this was one of those. The shoe was too tight to remove my foot and nobody was around to help out. I could see my utility knife across the room on one of the boxes. I thought of Yoda's instructions in the Star Wars saga, "Use the power of the force, Luke". Stupid little puppet, that didn't work. I went into puzzle solving mode. I had the mallet and nailer in hand and a bunch of hardwood in reach. The knife was about 12 feet away, or, for those of you who forget what a foot is, about 4 meters. I nailed four pieces of wood together. Ha. Now I could use the force, it just happened to be at the end of a pretty gnarly looking stick, which turned out to be quite a bit harder to control than a Jedi light sabre. It took a while but I finally knocked the knife to the floor. I worked it toward me, pushing boards out of the way and inching it closer and closer. It took all my patience to keep my wits about me and after about 20 minutes I was able to reach it. What the hell, it didn't have a blade in it, son of a...gun. There was a box of blades in my tool box but I'd need to add another board to my light sabre. It took another 20 minutes to knock my box over and free the box of blades. I started manipulating the box across the floor,  moving boards from it's path as I coaxed it across the floor. It was just about within reach when I heard, "You need some help with that?" Pat was standing behind me. "When did you get back?" I asked.
 "About 30 minutes ago."
"What the hell, why didn't you say so?"
"I couldn't believe your patience, I would have snapped long ago."
" And yet you had the patience to watch."
" Yeah, well I was eating lunch."
"You better cut me loose." I bristled.
"Yeah, of course, but maybe put the mallet down first."
That was probably a good idea.


Have a great day

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