Floods and Insulation

This is a long post.  Technically it is two posts that happen to be closely related.  I decided to post them together because they are both funny and I would forget at least one of them by the time my monthly post rolls around in December.  I even make some applicational points at the end if you care.  You can read them at two different times if you feel like drawing out your reading experience or if you are lazy and require a bookmark for a greeting card...

I have too much experience with two things: Floods and Insulation.

My mom says it is the Hervey curse to have houses flood.  My parent's house flooded when the washer valve got stuck open when it was filling.  The washer must have said to itself, "Ya know...I am much more capable of cleansing goodness than I can prove on a measly load of handtowels.  I think I will try my hand at hardwood kitchen floors."

My brother Mike had his condo flood but I don't remember how it happened. I know it required all new floors.  Hardwood again I believe.

I had a house flood the weekend before Thanksgiving last year when a pipe broke from cold weather.  Apparently the pipe said to itself, "You know what would be awesome?  A hockey rink."  One more hardwood floor replaced.

I am currently building a master bedroom/bathroom addition onto my house in Somis.  One phase of this building project has required me to peel back some of my existing roof to tie in the new roof.   I just finished framing on Thursday so needless to say I do not have anything resembling a proper roof.   The problem came when it rained yesterday.  I had put some plastic down over the bare plywood but the wind said to itself, "Oooooo! Check it out! Its a parachute!"  Thankfully no hardwood floors this time, just a 4 x 10 foot section of drywall.

The best part about this little leak in my plastic parachute was that it soaked all the insulation in the existing attic.  Needless to say when I saw my ceiling drywall bulging in the most non-aesthetically-pleasing way, I panicked.  I ran around to the other side of the exposed wall in my addition, got on my ladder and began pulling the sopping wet insulation out of a small crack.  Ten minutes later I was itching from my fingertips to my armpit.  Then I went to bed.  Good times.

Laying in bed last night with no small amount of itching going on reminded me of another experience I had with insulation.  I was about 11 years old and there was a bunch of construction going on in my neighborhood.  This gave my brothers, my neighbors and myself an abundant source of scrap wood and nails.  This abundance was naturally (notice I did not say "safely") fashioned into scores of ramps.  One day I will have to do a post on the plethora of ramps that I have had built in my lifetime.  Suffice to say for now that The X Games would be green with envy at the sheer volume of ramps constructed by a hoard of 10-13 year old boys who would all go on to fail Geometry.

One ramp, however, is important to this story.  My next door neighbor Gus, along with myself and my older brother George built our most wicked-awesome (spoken with a think Bostonian accent) ramp to date.  It was about 2 feet wide, 4 feet long from and made from 3/4 inch plywood set on about 24 inches worth of 2 x 4s nailed together.  We had learned our lesson about 6 ramps earlier that it was important to support the middle of the ramp (another story for another time.  I will say it involved me mangling my bike and tearing my pants from the crotch down to my knee.) so we did so with more 2 x 4s.  All in all it was an amazing ramp.  So amazing that I think we even spray-painted it with a skull and crossbones, an arrow and our initials.  So amazing that we were all scared to try it at first.  And this is where the insulation comes in.

While scouring a job site for the materials for our ramp we noticed a giant pile of what looked like that loose fill cotton that you stuff pillows with.  It was pink and looked heavenly.  As we stood fidgeting nervously in a semi-circle around our new ramp engaging in an unspoken game of chicken over who is going to jump off the ramp in rollerblades first, Gus came up with a great idea...

"Dude, we should go get all that cotton and make a big pile after the ramp so when we jump off we can have a soft landing."

George and I looked at each other and immediately decided that Gus was a genius.

With the giant pile of "cotton" in place I decided that I would be the first test subject.  We placed the ramp and our pile at the bottom of the hill in order to get sufficient speed.  It was a cakewalk.  You could jump as far and as high as you wanted and it was like landing in a giant ball of cotton candy.  George, Gus and I spent the next couple of hours fearlessly enjoying our new ramp.

After dinner that night I felt itchy.  Actually, it was so itchy it hurt.  My mom (who was a libertarian when it came to our complaints over physical discomfort) decided to investigate after hearing George and I complain for the better part of 2 hours.  We lifted our shirts and both of our backs, stomachs, arms, hands, necks and everything else was bright red.  The investigation was a short one.  We told her about the ramp and our pile of cotton.  I think she laughed.  She made us take long warm baths to open our pores so the little fiberglass insulation fibers would work their way out.  I think I itched for a week.

I love the way my mom dealt with this kind of stuff when I was a kid.  She never panicked.  She never freaked out when we came home bloody or injured.  We were free to be boys and we all have the scars and bad knees to prove it.  That is the way I want to be as a dad.  Boys need to jump off of ramps into piles of insulation and itch for a week.  Boys need to wrestle and build tree forts.   Boys need to eat dirt just to see what it tastes like. Boys need to throw rocks.   Boys need to play three flies up and butts up.  Boys need to skin their knees and get their baby teeth knocked out (only girls teeth should fall out.)  Boys need to play football in the street until the game ends in road rash and a bloody nose.  They need to do all these stupid and dangerous things so that they will not end up as passive, fearful, cowardly melvin milktoast men.  They need to be taught how to harness their manhood for the glory of God.  They need to be taught how to break conventions but keep commandments.  They need to be taught that being daring is not a sin and the fact that "something might go wrong" is rarely a good reason to do nothing.

I am convinced that the reason why so many boys/men are effeminate poofters these days is that their moms never let them get injured and their dads never insisted on it.  They spent their childhood in too much padding.  Too much Madden, not enough football.  Too much Tofu, not enough Pb and J.  Too much talking, not enough grunting.  And that is tragic.  It also explains a lot about our culture at large.  Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk and sometime you gotta grunt before you can talk.