My sister called to tell me she had a leaky tap.
If you grew up with Al Sommerfeld as your father, inconveniences like this were handled in a very specific way. First, they were tolerated for a long time. Sometimes years. Fixes usually involved duct tape or a hammer, depending on whether something was loose or tight.
One time, the sink in the laundry room was leaking and we had two buckets we used to catch the water so it wouldn’t be wasted. Dad wasn’t handy, but he was frugal.
“Remember Dad’s collection of washers?” I asked Roz.
We proceeded to discuss Dad’s collection of washers. He had a small basket in the garage full of washers of various colours, sizes and provenance. If something started leaking — a hose, a tap — Dad would poke around in the bin and find something that might work. I didn’t know until I was much older that you could buy a variety pack of washers for about a buck and a half; Dad would repurpose what he had.
He would unscrew the offending little nose part of the tap, blow in the screen and nudge out the corroded washer. He’d replace it with something from the bin; it usually didn’t work for long.
I took this opportunity to tell Roz about a deeply philosophical moment I experienced involving a leaky tap. I had been at the cottage with the boys when they were tiny, and as I lay there exhausted, I could hear the steady plock, plock, plock of the kitchen tap as it began to leak. In a silent place, the sound of that infernal drip was overpowering.
We didn’t have individual shut-off valves at the time, other than the main one, which meant going outside to get under the cottage. At night. There were probably bears. A dripping tap would never awaken the boys, but they might stir if a bear tore their mother into a few pieces.
I stared at the sink, and finally grabbed a piece of string and tied it around the end of the faucet. The drip was now ushered down into the drain and I announced to the silent room that this was a tomorrow problem, not a tonight problem. In the ensuing years, I have often declared that something is now a tomorrow problem because I can’t fix everything everywhere all at once, nor lose sleep trying. I’m a worrier, and parking a problem is my only hope.
“It’s not the washer; it’s the cartridge thing,” said Roz. My string theory was rendered useless as well as boring.
“Oh, you can just go the store and hand it in and they give you a new one,” I said.
“Thought about that. Wrong brand. The only place I can get one is Amazon. I hate Amazon, but I’m stuck. Do you have Amazon Prime?” she asked. Having Amazon Prime means a truck pulls into your driveway a few minutes after you order something.
“Nope. I just wait until I’ve ordered enough to get free shipping.”
“I want it faster, but I don’t feel like paying extra for it.”
“I just sign up for Amazon Prime when they offer it for a free trial, and then cancel it,” I told her.
“They’re offering me that! But I didn’t want to waste the offer on a stupid cartridge,” she said.
“What do you mean? They offer it all the time.”
“But you can only use it once, I thought.”
“I’ve done it a bunch of times,” I told her.
“Really? You can do it more than once?”
“Roz, it’s Amazon Prime. It’s not your virginity.”
I can’t wait for the next family dinner when I ask Roz if she remembers the first time she used Amazon Prime.
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