The Ceiling Fell, My Clothes Shelf Broke, and Then I Trapped a Rat

 

All of the above has happened since Friday.  Am I being tested? 

Two weeks ago my landlord decided to have the air conditioning unit serviced for the first time in three years.  I had never had any problems with the AC. 

As is usually the case, the Tucker AC guys showed up in pairs.  One did all the talking – and by that I mean yammering on and on and on and… while the other one mutely did all the grunt work.  Of course, I needed a “teeny tiny bit of Freon, just to top off the tank.”  There was something very “weird about the way that unit is installed – there’s no filter shelf.”  So they fixed that.  And they cleaned the coil.  

Now, I’m no HVAC technician, but over the years I’ve learned to become very wary of in-house technicians.  They all seem to follow the same suspicious protocol:

1) Bash the work of the previous technician and/or installer.

2) Find something they have “never seen it done like that before.”

3) Declare the problems fixed and I’m “good to go.”

4) But they lie.  Instead of the original problem being fixed, it is not and an additional, new problem emerges.

So, the Tucker AC guys leave and I go about my business as usual for two weeks.

Last Thursday, as I walked through the dining room toward the kitchen, I noticed a small puddle on the floor.  I immediately looked at Coqui, my nearly perfect but aging Bichon Frise.  “Did you pee on the floor?!?!?”  She stared at me with those enormous black eyes as if to ask “What the hell are you talking about?”

I made a pit stop in the downstairs bath and headed back toward my perch on the sofa.  A drop of water fell on my head.  We were in the midst of our obligatory daily thunderstorm, so I surmised that rain water was somehow leaking into the house. 

I called the landlord and told him about the leak. 

Two hours later, I walked to the powder room again – I’d been drinking lots of water and eating watermelon, okay? As I walked back toward the living room water was dripping in a catchy rhythm from the ceiling onto the floor.  Aha!  It’s not raining anymore, so the leak has to be connected somehow to my flushing the toilet.  

I tell the landlord, who has called somebody called Atlanta Fix-it Guy to troubleshoot the problem.  Mr. Fixit arrives, inspects the premises, listens to my amateur diagnostics and promises to get back to the landlord with an estimate.  He instructed me to refrain from using that toilet until he could get back. No problem.  I have another one upstairs.

I tell the landlord I am afraid the ceiling will collapse under the weight of the water, but because of my MS, I am not supposed to get over-heated, so I’ll have to run the AC once in awhile.  He brings in a giant plastic bin to catch the water.

The next day, Saturday, I make the connection between the AC turning on and the beginning of the leaks.  By this time there are cracks in the sheetrock and brown water spots emerging by the hour.  If I turned off the AC, the dripping would stop within three minutes.  Aha!

Just before that eureka moment, I had been stacking newly folded laundry on my closet shelf.  Apparently, I have too many clothes.  The shelving fell when a screw pulled away from the drywall.  I had no more angst to give it, though.  I  just closed the doors and walked downstairs.

A large chunk of the ceiling had fallen to the dining room floor five minutes after Coqui and I walked under it to go upstairs to bed.  My luck is holding out, however.  None of my furniture was hit.  Yet.

Atlanta Fix-it Guy has never called with an estimate.  A follow up call to him resulted in his taking a pass on the job because “he was booked for the next two weeks.”

A local AC company was called and arrived bright and early Monday morning.  “Easy fix,” said the one-who-does-the-talking.  His mute partner was outside staring at the condenser.  The next words out of his mouth?  “That guy from Tucker shouldn’t have left it this way.”  Uh-huh.

Fifteen minutes and $150 later, this dynamic duo leaves and says “You’re good to go, Ma’am.”

The leak was twice as fast as it was before.  The landlord and I were mopping up and stuffing absorbent materials into the hole in the ceiling, emptying my china cabinet and moving it to the other side of the room, sweating like two pigs and swearing to ourselves under our breaths at 9 p.m. Monday.

Just before that, I was standing at the patio door staring into space.  I tend to do that when I get overwhelmed.  Something moved in my peripheral vision.  I glanced down and spotted a pink-eared, fat bellied RAT!  Still depleted of angst, I pulled out the rat trap from the closet, loaded it with peanut butter and put it in the exact spot I saw Ratatouille shading himself under the daisies.

This morning?  Well, the local AC people who failed to fix my “easy fix” are supposed to be calling me when they are about to come out.  It’s 11:30 a.m.  No call yet.  The late Ratatouille is resting in peace in the dumpster outside.  My folded clothing is still sitting in neat stacks all around my bedroom.  And the clouds are gathering, once again, for our daily gully-washer. 

It’s been one of those times when the only thing left to do is laugh.

A Conversation Between My Heart and My Head

 

George Zimmerman is the kind of man who needs a gun to compensate for the things he lacks.  Objectivity. Courage. Athleticism. Self-Awareness. Honesty.

The gun, to the GZ’s of the world, is the great equalizer.  “I might be a wimp, but I have a gun, so I’m on solid ground,” he tells himself.

The gun is what gave George Zimmerman the stones to disregard a suggestion from the telephone cop NOT to follow Trayvon Martin. 

Unfortunately for GZ, he failed to take into consideration that a young man who has just turned 17 and has grown to a scrawny 5’11” might not take kindly to a short, stocky stranger following him around.  Doesn’t he know that one of the first ways a young black person learns we are, for some reason, not to be trusted is when we are followed around in a retail store by a “Loss Prevention” professional?  It’s insulting and it’s off-pissing.

Nobody really knows what happened out in that dark, damp pathway.  We know what GZ says happened.  Let’s take a look at his story.

GZ says Trayvon slipped out of his view for about four minutes.  That was plenty of time for Trayvon to run home and escape the “creepy-assed cracker” he told his friend Rachel was following him.  But I ask you.  How many hormone-hyped 17-year-old boys do you know who would actually run from a confrontation?  Especially a confrontation with a man who is a full four inches shorter.

So let’s give GZ the benefit of the doubt and say that Trayvon circled around and ambushed him on the “T” part of the path.  He probably didn’t jump out of the bushes, as reported by GZ.  There were no bushes.  No, Trayvon simply strolled up to GZ and asked him what the hell his problem was. And he probably hauled off and busted GZ’s nose.

It is not outside of the realm of believability that Trayvon Martin smarted off, jumped bad, swaggered and pranced.  He was an adolescent at an age where, as the old folks used to say, he was “smelling himself.”  And being young and still somewhat stupid to the ways of the real world, he failed to think about the possibility of this “creepy-assed cracker” being armed with a concealed weapon.

So, up to this point, both men made a series of very bad decisions.

According to the law as it was applied to this case, THIS is where the case began.  All the preceding paragraphs do not matter.  All the cause and effect we want to think about, talk about or scream about are not relevant.

A court of law is not a place for feelings.  It is a place for facts – details – evidence.  The prosecution did not even attempt to offer a scenario of this incident that proved that self-defense did not apply.  Even the witnesses they called to the stand failed to say anything that supported that.  Most of them said things that supported the defense, for heaven’s sake.

And what they said is, in a nutshell, Trayvon Martin was kicking George Zimmerman’s wannabe-cop ass. No one was able to prove who was screaming for help, but it was only GZ who had a busted nose and wounds consistent with having his head bounced off a sidewalk.  Yes, the defense exaggerated those injuries. That is their job.  It was the prosecution’s job to tell us, beyond a reasonable doubt, that it didn’t happen that way.  They couldn’t.

Now comes the point in question.  This is the only thing that mattered, according to the laws of Florida.  While Trayvon was beating the crap out of GZ, did GZ believe he was going to sustain extreme bodily harm, even death?  Probably.  If you listen to the screams on the tapes, you hear a person hysterical with fear.  Why he didn’t fight back with his own fists is a question only GZ can answer.  Why he drew the gun instead of kicking Trayvon in the groin is a question only GZ can answer.  Why, when he did pull the gun, he didn’t aim it at a shoot-to-maim part of Trayvon’s body, only GZ can answer.  Nobody asked him.

The jury in this case was as exemplary a panel as I’ve ever seen.  All reports from the courtroom were that they were attentive, some taking copious notes.  Several times they were asked if they wanted a break and they said no.  They wanted to keep working.  Knowing that the finish line was within their view, that jury could have sped along and come to their conclusion within a few hours.  Instead, they worked a total of 16 hours.  The question they sent out about the instructions for manslaughter told me there probably was at least one person who wanted George Zimmerman to be found guilty of something.  But that something wasn’t available to them.  All they knew is that they believed Zimmerman fired his gun in self-defense.  That’s all they needed to find him not guilty.

That jury would have had to totally disregard the insanely confusing instructions they must have had to read a dozen times just to understand, in order to find GZ guilty.  That’s what I think the OJ jury did.  Instead, the Zimmerman jury did their work and did their job by following the letter of the law.

Was justice served?  Hell no!  But I don’t blame the jury.  I blame the State’s Attorney for overreaching in her charges in the first place, probably in response to public opinion pressures.  I blame the prosecution for failing to instruct the jury on the matter of manslaughter. 

George Zimmerman profiled Trayvon Martin that night.  Race WAS a part of that profile, of that I have no doubt.  Zimmerman foolishly decided to play hero that night.  His personal demons were definitely at work, of that I have no doubt.  But our legal system seems to have little to do with justice for victims.  It seems to have everything to do with a fair trial for the accused. It is the system we have, and it worked.  Just not for Trayvon.