I’m still traumatized.
It is not every day you hear “Help! Help! Help!” screamed from your basement by a workman. But that is what happened this week.
Cause and Effect
For some reason that I don’t understand, the flash flood on Tuesday caused my sewer to back up, thus flooding my basement.
The next day, working from home, the Roto Rooter man came to snake the drain. The first crew had a 75 ft snake that proved not long enough to reach the clog. So, the guys with a bigger snake were called (it was hard to refrain from making a joke about their snake not being long enough).
The black guy with bigger equipment (another joke opportunity) arrived alone. Unable to carry his heavy-duty coil to my basement, he enlisted the help of the plumbers working at the house next door.
The Episode
I returned upstairs to work at the dining room table. It wasn’t long before I heard fearful cries from the young workman in my basement saying, “Help, Help, Help”. I flew into action, knowing I could help. Boy, was I wrong. The situation was out of my realm of knowledge.
Somehow, the 7/8-inch steel cable snake was wrapped around the worker’s thumb. When I arrived, he was struggling to hold the cable at bay and keep the tension off his thumb. He calmly but repeatedly said, “I’m about to lose my thumb, I’m about to lose my thumb.” Looking, the machine was already turned off, but that didn’t stop the torque of the snake that was continuing to tighten. We were both at a loss of what to do. That is when he told me to go get the plumbers working next door.
As I ran screaming for the plumbers, I thought, “Not your thumb. Of all the fingers to lose, not your opposable thumb. We cannot let this happen.” It didn’t take long for one of the plumbers, who I now call “Saw Cutter”, to come running toward me. Together we arrived back at the basement. I’ll never forget how earnestly the young man quietly said to Saw Cutter, “Bro, I am about to lose my thumb.”
Like me, Saw Cutter was frozen, dumbfounded for a split-second before he came back to the reality of the situation. He told the young man not to panic. Then he ran back to his truck for his 8-inch circular, pipe cutting saw. Unsure it would work, I went ahead and called 911 for back up.
With sparks flying and the ensnared young man moaning, Saw Cutter made quick work of severing the cable. I then disconnected from 911. And the young man ran out of the basement like a wounded animal, ecstatically reaching with his two freed hands for the sky screaming praises for which I can’t remember, because that is when I started crying from relief and glee.
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