The "Best Spent $12" Story

It was an ordinary day. Carol and I were watching House Hunters on HGTV. Our usual evening fare. Our son Tad had just come over to begin to assemble football programs. I had taught high school for many years, had retired from teaching, but still did most of the school's in-house printing on their equipment. I had just finished the football programs and had them stacked next to Tad's pool table in the basement. I had hired him to collate the programs for each week of the season. There were 30,000 11"x17" sheets of paper stacked in boxes around the edge of the pool table for him to work on. There was a home game in two weeks and Tad needed to finish 300 programs for it. Hope they will sell, since we have been having steady rain for about a week and the field and bleachers must be soaked. Well, Tad greets us and says he is heading down to start work on the first program. About 30 seconds later Tad returns and says, "Has anyone been down the basement lately?" "Why?" I ask. "You might want to go down and see for yourself," he replies. OK, here we go. As we start down the steps we notice something extremely strange. Something is not right. Everything seems surreal. I take a few more steps and step in water. Cold, clear water. It was so clear and still that you didn't even know that there was water there until I saw the ripples in it from my foot. Holy s**t! Where had it come from? We had a french drain in our basement, but didn't realize that we were supposed to have a sub pump. Wasn't one there when we moved into the house. Then it struck me. The programs!!! All submerged in 21" of water. Now what. We placed a call to our local fire company for help. A month before, my insurance company called to try to sell me an additional rider for my home owner's policy. After asking numerous questions I decided to pay the additional $12 for the rider which unbelievably included flood damage. Best move I ever made! I do get lucky every so often! Only problem was that I still had to have the programs done soon and they had to be totally reprinted. At least the material was covered under the policy and I had help with the reprinting. Also covered under the policy was the cleanup, my son's pool table and his entire collection of hockey cards which we he had left in the basement closet after moving out a few months before. That turned out to be the largest item. After receiving the check from the insurance company for all the damage, I'm sure you know what I bought first. The biggest pump I could fit in the french drain opening. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.