#49 - The Water Serpent

I got home from work the other night and couldn't help noticing that the barn roof was wet. Same for the shingle siding and the barn door and even the light over the door. "That's funny," I thought; it hadn't been raining where I was that afternoon.

I opened the door. The barn floor was wet too! I was suspicious. I went back outside and checked the garden hose. It was dripping. Time to have a talk with my boy.

We had a rather loud father-to-son discussion about how soaking wood rots, about how much electricity it takes to run a well pump, how irresponsible it is to waste water and everything else I could think of on the spot. Lije blurted out a weak story about how dirty his bike was and how we had had to hose it down to get the mud off.

He and I have had these talks before, and I always try to vary my arguments to put fresh emphasis on just how seriously I view the abuse of our outdoor water facilities. This time I dwelled on the hazards of shooting water at electric light fixtures. He said he got the point.

Whether or not he did get the point remains to be seen. I have observed over the last few years, that one young man has had just awful luck resisting the charms of the long, green water serpent. We actually have several of them coiled about the yard since there was a time when I thought I couldn't have enough strategically-located hoses for all the watering chores around the place. With faucets installed beside both vegetable gardens, a third outside the house near the kitchen and a fourth by the barn door, we seem to have serpents in all shades of green and of varying lengths, everywhere you look.

It has been quite apparent that Elijah, from a very early age, has had an extraordinary aptitude for all matters even remotely related to hoses. He can't seem to keep his hands off them. At the present stage of his development, he is master of the “strong-jet” setting on nozzles. He can write his name in the air, keep his upside-down bicycle wheel spinning at high RPMs, and, after long hours training in the driveway, he is more than qualified for his hydraulic mining license. It makes me think of all the expensive toys and books in his room . . . when all we needed to buy him was a hose and a nozzle.

My wife shows a maddening lack of concern at times. She lately dismisses his hose-play as only childhood amusement and leaves all the lecturing about water conservation and all the hose coiling to me. "The only time it worries me, "she says," is when I notice the animals are wet."

Since last fall, there hasn't been much trouble with the water serpents, mainly because they’ve been hibernating in the cellar. It occurred to me a few weeks ago, while I was activating the outdoor plumbing, that I should keep quiet about it and thus postpone our boy’s inevitable discovery that his old friends were back. My hopes were dashed however when I mindlessly set about the task of mixing a small batch of concrete without checking on his whereabouts. To the sound of running water, Lije came racing around from the backyard with his bow and arrow and gleefully said, "Hey Dad! When did you turn the water on?”