Theresa Lewis

It’s safe to say that I may never be an architect, an engineer, or a lawyer, but I do have smarts in other areas of life, thank God. I was going to include a surgeon on that list, but I have watched so many surgeries on television that I think I can do some of them.

Actually, the only surgeries I have ever done were emergencies on myself, and once on my brother when the two of us extricated branch bark from his arm. Surprisingly enough, my brother’s arm healed beautifully and he still has full function of it.

On myself, surgery was usually things like relieving ingrown toenails and removing warts. Oh, yes, and then once I did surgery on my dog to remove a broken tooth. So, you see, I couldn’t justifiably include surgeon as one of the professions I may never achieve.

I have tackled so many feats in life that gave me the results I wanted without ever having had any prior knowledge of how to get the job done. I have repaired dental equipment, household appliances (large and small). I have even successfully done auto body repairs and some auto mechanics in my day.

All that having been said, there were the odd things that didn’t go quite as well as I had anticipated. For instance, one day I decided to wash our feather pillows in my home washing machine. Since the pillows were quite big and my washer wasn’t, I decided to wash the pillows one at a time.

I stuffed the pillow into the machine and turned it on. Once the machine started to fill, I went off and made myself a cup of tea and sat down to relax for a spell. When the wash cycle began, the washer began making an unfamiliar noise. It was grinding. I ran in to stop it before it destroyed the motor. When I went into the laundry room, I saw that the washer was away from the wall and was still travelling towards me. I threw my weight against it to stabilize it so I could turn it off. The inside barrel was banging against the casing. The noise was so loud that it rattled me. My heart was whacking out of my chest.

I had to remove the pillow from the washer because it was obvious to me that I couldn’t let it do the full cycle. I drained out as much of the water as I could then I put the machine on spin to drain the rest of the water. What a mistake that was. The machine made a horrific noise and practically flipped over. It felt like the washer lunged at me. I grabbed onto it and shut it down as fast as I could. Now I was stuck with the dilemma of having to remove the pillow from the machine.

In your wildest dreams, you can’t even begin to imagine how heavy a water bloated feather pillow can be. I yanked and tugged and yanked some more. I couldn’t even budge the darn thing. I was sweating heavily and I was shaking from the strain of all the exertion. I had to stop because nothing was working for me. I took a moment to think it through so I could try a different approach. I thought I would probably have more leverage if only I were a few feet taller.

That gave me a great idea… one that I was sure would work. I shoved my hands in the barrel and tied a heavy rope around the pillow then I got a ladder. I climbed to the top of the ladder so I would be in a better position to pull it straight up and out of the barrel. Yeah, right, it worked in theory only. Trying to lift that sucker was like trying to pull a fat lady ass-backwards through a knothole.

Undaunted, I decided to set up a winch to get it out. That did work. After each pull, I tied the rope around the door handle. I was able to move it just inches at a time. What a struggle that was. It literally took me hours to get the pillow out of the machine. By the time I got it out of the washer, I was totally exhausted. I ended up having to throw the pillow out and get a new one. Note to self, always balance a laundry load and never, ever try to wash feather pillows at home.

The End