Safety Rules
by Bill Gadbow
…. an excerpt from “The Balderson Drive Conspiracy One” by Bill Gadbow, available on paperback or as an e-book on Amazon Books …
When I got back from New Mexico, a few things happened at home that I had to take care of. Once I got through those, I drew up a few safety rules for householders that I think will be helpful to post here. I always liked the phrase “safety rules.” You could take the normal meaning where “rules” is a noun and “safety rules” is a list. Or you could think of “rules” as a verb, which would make the phrase a declaration of enthusiasm, as in “San Dimas High School Rules!!” I probably mean it both ways.
Rule One: When going to the bathroom at night, women should turn on the bathroom light. Otherwise, someone else, through no fault of his own and probably because he is more than half asleep, could come in and accidentally sit on her in the dark.
Rule Two: Men are exempt from Rule One because men always stand up to pee, so there is no danger that someone could sit on them.
Rule Three: When cleaning up urine on a bathroom floor, whether it is caused by someone standing up to pee in the dark, or caused by anything else, it is a good idea to use an old rag and to wear the rubber gloves that are kept in the cabinet under the sink. Another good option is to use a pail and mop which are kept in the garage. While doing this labor of love, it is not a good idea to wear your new golf shoes, even though you might need to break them in before using them the next day and they have the plastic spikes that will probably not leave marks on the kitchen floor.
Rule Four: If you are wearing golf spikes in the house and the spikes catch on the hallway rug and you fall down the stairs and the pail you are carrying spills foul smelling liquid on the hallway rug and the mop handle from the mop that was in the pail pokes a hole in the dry wall, do not joke that you are “antiquing the house.” Also read the instructions in “The Guide to Common Home Repairs” before attempting to fix the problems.
Rule Five: Do not use hot water in the steam cleaner. Use cold water and let the cleaner heat up the water itself.
Rule Six: Do not wear headphones when patching a hole in dry wall. This job requires both creativity and concentration and, if you are listening to music on your noise blocking headphones, you will not be able to hear the timer warn you that the pizza in the oven is ready.
Rule Seven: After an oven fire, turn off the appliance and open all the windows and doors of your house.
Rule Eight: If your hands are heavily bandaged from being exposed to very hot steam from a steam cleaner, and you are holding a beer bottle in one hand, while attempting to toggle the remote control between a basketball game and a baseball game, and you drop both your beer and the remote, pick up the beer first, but be careful not to step on the remote.
Rule Nine: If you step on a remote-control device with your bare feet and the remote shatters and a large piece of broken plastic gets lodged in your foot, do not pull the plastic out of your foot. If you do, blood might start gushing all over your family room.
Rule Ten: If you get a large gash on the bottom of your foot, do not attempt to stop the bleeding by using one of the throw pillows from the couch. These are surprisingly expensive and almost impossible to replace. If you do get a replacement, it will probably not exactly match the other pillows and will look terrible. Instead, you should hop on the one good foot, into the kitchen and use a kitchen towel to stop the bleeding. These are cheap and should have been thrown out a long time ago.
Rule Eleven: If your wife is mad at you for all the damage that you did to the house while she was at work, and she tells you to just go out in the yard and do something for a few hours, and while you are mowing the lawn, you run over one of her favorite slippers, which the dog has brought outside in an obvious attempt to get her attention and maybe play a nice game of “chase the dog who has a slipper”, do not bring the one undamaged slipper back into the house and announce “at least this one is still okay.” It is probably a better idea to just throw the good slipper out, along with the remnants of the cut-up slipper. Make sure to get all the pieces cleaned up because your wife will find even the smallest piece of slipper and be able to figure out the entire scenario from one tiny scrap.
Rule Twelve: If you write up a list of safety rules, do not post them on the refrigerator. Your wife will probably rip them up and throw them away. Post the rules somewhere that she will be unlikely to read them. I suggest putting them in chapter thirty-nine of a book that you are writing.