lucky coincidence (81/100)
This afternoon, Alex was sitting outside, socially distancing with a friend. She came back in.
“Dad? There’s a guy out here who needs to get into our back yard to work.”
Marcus went outside — it was a worker from our phone company. There are lots of houses in our neighbourhood that are still being repaired after Hurricane Harvey (or newly built for the same reason), and this worker needed to access the utility pole in our back yard to connect a house down the street. Naturally, we let him in.
About 5 minutes later, there was the sound of an explosion, and the power went out in our house. I ran to the window in my office, and saw a giant puff of black smoke. That’s got to be a transformer that blew, I thought.
And then I remembered that there was a worker up a ladder in our backyard.
I raced to our back door, fully expecting to see a lifeless body on our grass. He was standing there, at the bottom of his ladder, his eyes wide like saucers.
“It … it was the tree ….” he stammered, pointing to a tree in a neighbour’s yard. Half of the top of the tree was missing, leaving a tall, denuded stump. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t touch anything. There wasn’t any wind. The tree just … broke.”
I looked at him. “Are you okay? I heard the bang, and thought you were dead!”
He looked at me, his eyes still wide. “I’m fine. I saw it fall. And then the wires broke. And I ran down the ladder.”
By this time, Marcus had arrived. “Are you okay?!” he shouted, alarmed.
The worker’s eyes were still wide. “I’m fine. It … it just … broke. There wasn’t any wind! The tree just … broke.”
Eventually, he calmed down and called his boss. Marcus called the electric company emergency line. The worker got off his phone.
“I’m going to go now,” he said. “My boss doesn’t want me up the ladder working on the wires. Someone else is going to have to come later.”
“Understandable,” I grinned. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
We still don’t have power — no one in our neighbourhood does — and I suspect It will take a while to get it back. We have battery back-up on everything, and a generator if repairs take longer than we hope, so it’s all good.
I can’t figure out whether or not what happened was unlucky (no power) or lucky (no one was hurt). But I’m leaning toward lucky.
(Or maybe just a cosmic message to remind us all to stay alert.)
Soundtrack: Get lucky by Daft Punk featuring Pharrell Williams
