White lies: relationships, politics and sports

I am curious:  Do you suffer from cerebral echoes?  I do, and sometimes there just is no relief to be found.

Case in point:  I was talking with a friend of the other gender last week and an innocent subject breached the conversation to which her response was “a little white lie.”  She would have no way of knowing this, but I knew that her little fib was an impossibility.  I left it unchallenged, but her words continue to echo through my head without decreasing in intensity.

Why is it that people so readily expect dishonesty to be a beneficial foundational choice in relationship building between people? 

For those who are sports fans of any genre, we have all been in the situation where a member of our preferred team commits a foul that goes uncalled.  Do we stand and scream at the officials?  No!  But let an uncalled foul happen on the other side, and we don’t stop complaining for a week.  This disingenuous nature runs rampant throughout our society.  Our perception that what benefits our here-and-now outweighs the long term consequences is dangerous and foolhardy.

I could quite easily correlate this concept to the current presidential campaign and point to the innumerable lies and broken promises that has led to a divisive “none-of-the-above” candidate to be leading in the polls, but I made a promise to myself I wouldn’t let this stray into politics.

On the outside, we habitually cloak ourselves in garish costumes and stage makeup to present our best appearance, and a significant part of that charade is pretending to be someone or something other than the raw truth that hides beneath our faux façade.  How many times have we seen or experienced relationships grow apart, when in reality, the people just gradually dropped the pretense and showed themselves as they have always been?  “You aren’t the person I fell in love with.”  Maybe, maybe not.

In the Biblical sense, I am in no position to “cast the first stone,” but I do think and consequently strive to live my life with honesty as a forthright requirement in all of my relationships: business, casual and romance.  The dénouement to this piece could easily circle back to sports or politics or relationships, but I’ll leave the reverberation of the consequences of actions to echo around in your cranium bouncing off of all those indiscretions committed, ignored and forgiven, and then for you to decide whether those white lies made your relationships, you, or for that matter, anyone else, better or worse. 

That was an interesting weekend

That was an interesting weekend.  Some of you may remember a week-and-a-half ago my power went out for about four hours.  When it did come back on I noticed that I had lost about 50% of my water pressure.  I figured there was an air bubble somewhere between the house and the wellhead and it would eventually work its way out.

I grudgingly lived with a weak shower and barely enough pressure to wash the truck, but I did notice that at times the pressure would be better suggesting a cure was inevitable.  Thursday afternoon, I was cleaning up the kitchen and decided to go check the pressure gauge on the tank.  The pressure was holding, but I thought, I wonder what would happen if I cut the power.  As soon as I pulled the disconnect, I heard the water start to siphon back to the well (that isn’t supposed to happen).

Later that evening while getting ready for bed, I flushed the toilet only to realize that I had NO WATER.  Fortunately, I am still in prep mode for winter storms that can at times disrupt the power (and consequently the well pump), so I had a bathtub full of flush water and several gallons of drinking water stored up for emergencies.

Funny aside: While looking through a drawer to find the paperwork on the well, I found this neat book.  The pages were all yellow, so it might have been old.  Inside was the name, address and phone number of every business in the county, and they were categorized according to the type of business.  I found the phone number to the well company without looking at their invoice or even turning on a computer.  I don’t know who invented it, but what a neat thing:  Business phone numbers printed up in a book!

Friday morning the well company said they would be right over to get the water flowing again.  Four hours later, the truck pulls up.  (I had temporarily forgotten that everyone here works on mountain time.  Four hours is actually early; good thing it isn’t hunting season, it could have been four days.)

After an hour-and-a-half of studious diagnoses, he determined that he had to pull the well (exactly what I had told him when he arrived).  He next discovered that 6 small pine tree saplings had grown up near the wellhead, and they had to be cut down so he could get his crane in there.  He said he would find someone with a chainsaw, and if nothing else, would come back “after work” and do it himself.  He left with the promise that I would have water in the morning.

I started calling about 10:30 AM (allowing for mountain time), but never reached him until about 2:30 PM.  He said, “Oh, I thought you had worked something out.”  HUH???  “Let me find someone to help me, and I’ll be right out.”  Nope, never heard from him again.

After returning from the store with my truck bed full of clear plastic jugs reminiscent of an episode of Moonshiners, I settled in for another night no running tap water and the certainty that if he didn’t come on Saturday, there was no way he would come on a Sunday.

To my surprise, he called me about 8:30 in the morning and said he had finally found someone to help him.  He was going to meet him over at the business, pick up his truck and would head out my way.  2:30 in the afternoon, he starts up my driveway.

In the end, he found a busted coupling about 300 feet down, replaced that and by about 6:30 last night, I had a hot shower.  Today, well it’s a Happy Monday, so I better get to work, just give me a few hours, it is mountain time after all.