Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Column

Ladder, husband: What can go wrong?

By HOWARD TROXLER
Published December 11, 2007

As I teetered on the top step of the 5-foot folding ladder, the one that says, DO NOT STAND ON THIS STEP, and the whole thing gave way beneath me, I thought, this really is not a problem.

See, I am a homeowner with a Ladder Exit Strategy. I have never been on a ladder where I did not think ahead about what to do if it fell.

This is not to say that all of these plans are practical. For example, for the Big Sturdy Extension Ladder, the one that reaches the highest peak of the roof, my escape plan is simply to dangle bravely from the eaves until rescued.

As for the Rickety Folding Aluminum Ladder, used for getting into the attic from the garage, my plan was simple: grab the framing of the entryway, let the ladder fall out of the way, and then calmly drop to the floor. I would be Bruce Willis in a crisis, not Dagwood Bumstead.

Unfortunately, rather than simply falling, the ladder buckled and twisted beneath me, bringing my legs with it. I had not planned for this. So after I yielded my grip on the good framing timbers of the attic, and then pulled down some of the trim pieces behind me, the entire man-and-ladder combination took a long, grinding topple toward the concrete garage floor.

From here my recollection is imprecise. I appear to have bounced off the concrete and free of the ladder and, given that the garage door was open, ended up rolling out into the middle of the driveway. It is possible that I emitted certain guttural expressions of displeasure.

Naturally, every single neighbor on the street was outdoors at that precise moment, creating the maximum possible audience. In a fog I could see what seemed like multitudes of feet running. My plan here was to spring up cheerfully and sing, "Ta da!" For some reason I was not able to carry this out.

It so happens that among our neighbors, there is a police officer married to an emergency room nurse. Can you imagine anything better? I mean, maybe living next door to a plumber.

So I am lying there looking up at a circle of neighbors, while she is working on my right arm, which is already developing a nice purplish sort of rash. And yet, somehow, nothing was sticking out of the wrong place, or making any kind of crunchy noises.

At this point the neighbors began to marvel at the scene. I have not mentioned that the garage was filled with construction debris, including a just-removed bathtub with a bunch of pointy ragged shards facing upward. The ladder had fallen right next to it.

All of this seemed bitterly unfair. I had spent all of Saturday morning not falling off my roof, removing large amounts of pine straw and leaves. Where were the neighbors then? Did any of them look up and remark, "Look at that man walking on his roof with admirable competence! Clearly he is a fellow who knows what he is about."

No. I am Dagwood Bumstead after all. I am condemned to a career of being advised, "Be careful!" I imagine that the news of any future ladder-mounting will spread from house to house and people will come running from all around just to say it. Let alone my wife. And I even had a plan! It is too much to bear.

***

If you'd like to make fun of me in person, there's a live chat at noon today on TroxBlog. I'll be taking reader questions and comments from noon to 1 p.m.

[Last modified December 10, 2007, 23:41:37]