Husband on Tour
by Vimala Ramu
(Bangalore)
Lucky are the ladies whose husbands do not have to travel much for their work. From my own experience I know that most of the calamities have a way of happening when the man of the house is out of town.
Two instances I heard about my daughter-in law in US recently confirmed this belief of mine:
My son, being a guitar manufacturer, goes out of town twice a year to attend music trade shows. Since it is a purely business trip, the wife is left behind to hold the fort for their two children.
Once, when my son came back from one of those trips, he found something missing in his wife. It was her appendix! During his absence she had developed acute appendicitis. So she had driven herself to the hospital, got the problem diagnosed, had the surgery done and by the time the husband returned she was back home, hale and hearty sans appendix! Extremely brave of her, I should say.
But, the second occasion was a little more daunting, to say the least. The husband was away, out of station. It had snowed all day. She had slipped on the icy deck and had hurt her back which made it difficult for her to bend.
As there was a power breakdown, she trotted the generator out of the garage and got it started as she had been trained to do. While the generator was safely outdoors, it still sat under a small overhang outside the garage door. When it came time to refill the generator, rather than take (waste?) the time to shut it off and then fill the tank, she chose to top it off when it was running. A little gasoline spilled as she did this, but nothing alarming. Later the generator suddenly shut off and all the lights went out. Assuming that the generator just needed a simple restart, she casually went to check on it (in the dark), only to find it engulfed in fire with the flames almost reaching the house eaves! In an instant response, she shouted for her friend next door as there was no time to ring up 911, the usual American helpline. Her friend brought her husband out who took a look at the generator. He managed to yank it, drag it and throw it into a snow drift. The snow doused the flames and thus a greater damage was averted.
When the husband returned from his trip, all he had to do was to replace the generator.