rhythmisaprancer

When I was a teenager, I worked in a garden department of a store. We had plants to water. The pipes for the water had shutoffs in the ceiling in addition to the faucets themselves. I was working over the weekend and needed to water the plants, but no water would come out. The ceiling shutoffs were open, but I had heard there was a master shutoff just inside the store.

So I went in and was looking around on the walls, following pipes, and found this very large pipe with a shutoff on it. It had a tag hanging on it that said “emergency test” but my teen brain thought this meant it had been tested and passed inspection.

I turned it on and went outside, only to find an enormous amount of water coming out a different pipe, some kind of drain. Not what I wanted! When I reentered the store, the fire alarm was going off, but I thought nothing of it, shut the valve, and went about my business. By the time I got back outside, the fire department was there.

About 15 minutes later, fire folks in full gear were in my area poking around with the boss. I asked what happened, and they said for some reason there was a pressure drop in the sprinkler system and it triggered an automatic response 😬 I told them what I did, and they said they were too old for this, and then left. Not a great decision for me that day…

I didn’t like cottage cheese until I was 38. I kept trying it, not sure what changed.

Shaggy

What walks on four legs at dawn, two legs at noon, and three legs at dusk?