Neighbors are great for impromptu chats, standing in the street with dogs, with trash bags, with full bottles of wine (I had a French neighbor once).
Dave noticed the pipes that had just shown up running along my fence, down the garden, and letting out onto the sidewalk.
“Ar those 4-inchers?”
“No clue.”
“Those look like 4-inchers.”
My expression must have given me away.
“You want 6-incher for drainage. 4-inchers might clog.”
I looked at the shiny white piping snaking up the garden, running along the garage roof, behind the steps, and disappearing into the ground.
And then, without really trying to, I summed up a bit of my life philosophy, the thing that keeps my hair from going grey, that keeps me sleeping so deep at night.
I tapped the end of the 4-inch pipe with the toe of my sneaker and looked up at Dave.
“I guess I don’t worry about what could go wrong.”
Dave’s eyes got wide.
“Wow. I wish I was like that.” Thank god for Dave’s reaction. He made me feel proud, not foolish. But, come to think of it, fools can be proud. And they’re smarter than smart people, depending on your metric.
“It’s draining well enough,” I said. “If I gotta dig it up and repipe it in 5 years, worrying about it now ain’t going to do me any good.”
And that was the end of it.
I’m not able to do this sort of mind-shift with all things, but with pipes I guess I can. Of course, the drawback is I end up not being ready for some of the stuff that comes at me, like, say, a clogged pipe in 5 years.
But having fewer worries overall seems like a pretty good tradeoff. And I had a good laugh with the Guatemalan guys who dug the trench and actually met one of their kids, who came to watch.
To do the math, I get 5 good years of no headache in return for 2 (possible) days of headache.
If, in fact, the pipe clogs.
Which it may.
But it might not.
—-
Huh.
I did my best.
I’m good with that.