The Local Fire Hydrant

I'm fighting tiredness today. And let me tell you why. Now I hope you're sitting down because this is just too funny to me. Or maybe it's just really funny because I'm really tired and things tend to be really funny (or really frustrating) when I'm really tired. Really! So, bear with me.

I'm oh, so very tired because my son woke me up at 1:30 in the morning. He didn't just sneak in, tap me on the shoulder, and quietly say my name. Oh, no, my friends. He swings my door open and yells, "MOM!"

I sit upright with my eyes opened wide (though still seeing nothing), and reply, "What?!" in a loud whisper.

He says, and I quote, "I think the fire hydrant across the street just exploded." Yeah, you can read it again. But you read it right the first time.

At first, I thought it was just a dream and that I was simply imagining this strange conversation. But then he says, "MOM! Did you HEAR me?!"

And I reply, "Of course I heard you; give me a second to wake up." But what I was THINKING was, one... who cares? And two... what the heck do you want ME to do about it? But I said neither of these things out loud; Jeff was in panic mode, for heaven's sake. By not exhibiting an appropriate amount of fear and panic myself, I would have hurt the boy's feelings. Do you know what it looks like when an 18-year-old boy's feelings are hurt? It's not worth it.

So, I ask him what makes him think that the fire hydrant exploded. (I'm telling you, just typing that makes me laugh out loud!) He said that he heard a big boom and now the hydrant is just spewing water all over the place. I get up to look out the window and sure enough, torrents of water are being shot out of the fire hydrant. The spray is only going about 12 feet above the ground, but it was hitting ground about 20-25 feet away. Pretty impressive, really.

You know what else I saw? Another fire hydrant doing the exact same thing, only to someone else's lawn. And up the street, next to yet another fire hydrant, there's one of those white trucks with the yellow spinning light on the top. You know, one of those 'city workers'.

I calmly explained to Jeff that I was pretty sure that they were just flushing out the hydrants. And they probably chose to do it in the middle of the night to prevent hundreds of people from feeling the panic and fear that Jeff unfortunately had to suffer through. (If he'd just go to bed at a decent hour, he could have missed the whole thing just like I almost did!)

Under my breath, I thanked Jeff for keeping me apprised of the local fire hydrant maintenance plan and (unsuccessfully) tried going back to sleep.

Tonight, I'm locking my door!