Doing What No One Else Wants To Do
Since we've broken away from the timeline of the narrative, this would be a good time for me to talk about a strength I possess that has also been a curse.
The vast majority of work my dad's construction company did was new installation of underground utilities. However, on occasion, we would have to connect an old sewer line to a sewer main, or replace an old septic system completely, meaning we still had to connect an old sewer line to a new line. In either operation you had to deal with cutting an old sewer pipe and usually digging up and removing an old section of the line. The old pipes were seldom empty. Usually this process resulted in the guy who had to make the cut and the connection, standing in raw sewage, and handling the old sewage covered line until the connection was secure.
Nobody wants to stand in sewage or handle old sewage lines, so I would do it. If it had to be done, I would just dig down in my soul and bring up the grit to do the job, no matter how distasteful. Very quickly, people started to notice this about me and that meant when there was any distasteful job, I would be the person people thought of to do the task.
A more modern crew. Wikipedia
At first this was mostly confined to my construction job, but as I got older and was exposed to different jobs and different situations, the relatively little amount of grit it takes to stick your hands in sewage grew, as I faced harder and harder challenges. For example, one cold morning I was standing next to the road in front of our house, waiting for the school bus, when I heard a terrible sound from across the street. Our neighbor was an older gentleman who had a cat he dearly loved. It had crawled up under the hood of his car and was sleeping on the engine when he started his car. The cat was pulled into the fan belt and was chopped up pretty bad. There were no animal hospitals in that part of Appalachia back then, so it would have been hours before the cat could even see a veterinarian. Even then, the vet would only be putting the cat down because she had been chopped up so bad.
The poor man was beside himself, he loved that cat so much. He looked at me and said that she had to be put down as quickly as possible, but said there was no way he could do it. I told him I would take care of her as quickly as I could. Then, I gently lifted her out of the car and took her to our barn, where I dispatched her. This was extremely painful for me. This happened not long after Shorty's death, and it made me realize for the first time that Shorty very likely didn't die on the spot when the truck ran over him. In all likelihood, Dad had to put him down. I assume this about Shorty, but I never asked my dad. I knew from this experience with the neighbor’s cat that it was something we just don't talk about.
Killing that poor old cat was far more difficult for me than climbing into sewage and handling a pipe, but it had to be done, so I did it. Later in my life, a dog had to be put down and no one there could do it. So, again, I did it. I can't emphasize enough how painful it is for me to have to kill a pet. But when it has to be done, every second of delay makes it worse. You have to reach down deep in yourself and draw that grit up from your depths and deal with the situation without the burden of emotions.
There are two negative aspects to having such grit. The first is that people learn that you are the guy that can do the thing no one else has the fortitude to handle. Therefore, they dump their nasty jobs on you. I carry the burden of killing eight dogs and three cats. I never wanted to kill any, but someone had to do it. In each case, the act had to be done by someone, and I was that someone who could turn off my emotions and take action.
The second negative aspect is that, at some time, all of the emotions and memories return into your mind, but the grit has retreated back into your depths; you're defenseless against your emotions. You feel every drop of that pain, over and over, each time you're reminded of the event. Sometimes even years later.
I think I should return us to the timeline of the narrative now and set aside the philosophy for a while, otherwise memories will come flooding into my brain and there's no telling where they will lead me.
First post & table of contents
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