Consequences of Eavesdropping: A Difficult Assignment
Posted: Thursday, February 02, 2012
by Jack H. Schick
I’m lazy. I had a great allegory story, which was our assignment a few weeks ago. It involved deforestation of the Brazilian jungle, a conflict between a timber baron and a jaguar. But, creating the proper atmosphere of a jaguar creeping through the forest at night and pouncing on someone is difficult. It’s also difficult to create the setting of a lumbering camp that’s realistic, and to create characters fleshed out enough to reinforce and solidify the allegory. I didn’t have the time or energy and didn’t even try.
This week on WryteStuff we’ve got a big reward point assignment to do a story about eavesdropping and an embarrassment experienced by committing it. I can’t think of a single good example from my personal experiences. I thought about doing a fictional article. I'd do a scary murder story (I still might do it—I actually did one like that a year of so ago on SearchWarp called Angie and Me). But again, I’m too lazy. It'd take a lot of work, and too busy with other stuff.
As I’ve said, lately I’ve been doing research articles on obscure things that interest me, or personal experience essays that come in a flash and I knock out the rough draft in an hour or two. A fictional story about an eavesdropper would require a lot of work to create the setting and atmosphere, the characters and their motivations, good action and a theme. On top of that, I’d have to squeeze it all into a 2,500 word piece. I know, I know, a good writer would have no problem, but I’m too lazy.
I was sitting in the living room the other night commiserating over the assignment. I’d sure like to get those 300 points. I’m wrapped up in that stuff, the competiveness (I check my WryteStuff scores, popularity and readership numbers, way too often. It’s a perverse addiction). I asked my wife if she had any eavesdropping experiences. She thought for a while and said that she didn’t. She suggested that I just make something up. I moaned at the thought of the work required to do that scary murder story. I thought for a minute then said, “You know, I can’t think of a single eavesdropping incident…unless you count the time Rudy jumped off of his roof.”
She envisioned Rudy jumping of his roof for a moment, got the pun, then laughed out loud at the mental image of him ‘eavesdropping.’
So, here is the only eavesdropping story I can think of:
I met Rudy when he joined the Oil Movements Department at Amoco Refinery at Casper, Wyoming. He was a much older guy. He was transferred from an Amoco chemical plant in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania after it blew up. Rudy was shell shocked in the explosion. He was a jittery, quiet guy. You could tell that something had been rattled loose by the blast. He would nervously pace back and forth and chain smoke cigarettes whenever he heard a sonic boom.
Since we both were originally Pennsylvanians, and Easterners were generally ostracized my Wyoming locals, Rudy and I became fishing and canoeing buddies. Rudy only worked at Casper for a few years before he retired. He moved back to his home territory at Shickshinny, along the Susquehanna River, north of Berwick in central PA. A few years later, I left Amoco and moved back to Pennsylvania, too.
After I’d been settled for a few years, I decided to look Rudy up. Through the Amoco pension people, I got his address, and then looked up his phone number. He was happy to hear from me and invited me up to his place, deep in the woods at Shickshinny. It was about a three hour drive from my place.
Rudy, approaching 70 years old, was divorced by then (I’d seen that coming years before). He lived alone in a large log-cabin style home built into the side of a hill. He was completely surrounded by forest. The long, steep, dirt driveway up to the house meant that he was pretty much isolated up there if there was deep snow. In the front of Rudy’s house, which faced down hill, the eaves were a good twenty-five feet above a gravel parking area below. In the back, where you cross a wooden deck and entered into the second level ‘mud room,’ the eaves were only about ten feet above the ground. Along the back side of the house, right below the eaves, rocks and mounds of dirt from excavation were unevenly piled up.
Rudy seemed less skittish and jittery (there were fewer sonic booms in Pennsylvania than in Wyoming), but he looked older. He moved slower and was hunched over a little. I didn’t pry at first, but during our after dinner conversation he mentioned that he was still recovering from his injuries; his cracked chin, bad knees and his hernias. I asked him what happened.
We’d had a bad winter, lots of snow. Since he lived in the woods, the gutters on Rudy’s eaves, naturally, filled with leaves clogging the drains. When the snow melted, large, long icicles hung down, actually bending the spouting. Melt water, instead of draining off properly, ran back under the eaves and down the side of the house. He was afraid it would damage his foundation and rot out his roof, so, when there was a thaw, he figured he’d better get the gutters cleaned out. The divorce had cost him half his savings and half his pension, so, rather than hiring someone, he decided to do it himself.
He propped an extension ladder against the eaves at the back of the house. The footing was uneven due to the rocks and excavation debris that was now covered with leaves and downed branches. Rudy was not as nimble as he was when he was only 60. He got up the ladder okay, but stumbled a little when he got onto the roof. He bumped the ladder and, on the uneven surface, it tipped and slid to the side then clattered to the ground. He had no way to get down.
Rudy was a little concerned, but went ahead and cleaned out the gutters while he was up there. It took his mind off of his problem. That only took an hour or so. After that he had nothing to do put sit there on the roof and worry. His sister was coming to visit, but not for a couple more days. The postman couldn’t see the house from the end of the drive way, and besides, it was after deliver time. No neighbors lived within a half a mile, so yelling would do no good. He was on his own.
As the sun passed zenith and began to settle toward the wooded ridge to the west, the air chilled and the breeze picked up. A storm front was expected to move through by dark bringing more snow. That’s why he’d taken the opportunity to clean the gutters. Clouds moved in. Flurries of snow began to flutter through the woods. Rudy had been on the roof for over five hours and was getting desperate. He figured, unless he found a solution, that’s where his sister would find him, lying on the roof frozen stiff. If there was a substantial snow fall, she might not even bother to try to get up the hill, or would not recognize it as his body up there, until the thaw.
There were no trees close enough to the eaves for him to grab onto and shinny down. It was a long drop to the frozen parking lot in the front. His only escape was off the back side of the roof, and his only method was to jump. There were piles of rocks and branches that would break his ankles if he just dropped off the eaves, and he simply did not have the courage to do it.
Finally, as the sun set, the air grew frigid, the flurries increased to a steady snow and Rudy began to feel hypothermic, he settled on a solution. He decided that he would never muster the courage to just jump, so he would force himself to. He went up to the apex, took a deep breath and ran toward the back eaves. When he reached the edge, there was no stopping. He leaped into the air like a track star.
He dropped off the eaves like a rock. Having given himself a substantial initial velocity, Rudy landed, feet first, with incredible force. His knees jammed up into his chin, cracking it. Cartilage in his knees mashed and ripped, ligaments strained. His torso and spine compacted and compressed. His scrunched up guts had nowhere to go and bulged, giving him and inguinal and a diaphragmatic hernia. The wind was knocked out of him. He rolled over onto his side and managed to unravel himself from the stoved up ball he compressed himself into, but he couldn’t move or get air. He just laid there for a good ten minutes before he managed to get to his feet and stagger into the house to call the ambulance.
Rudy was only in the hospital a couple of days. Unless there were further complications, they weren’t going to bother fixing the hernias. He was probably going to have to have his knees cleaned up, though. Since he seemed to be okay, I'm afraid I had difficulty stifling my chuckles. While listening to his story, the mental image I got of Rudy jumping off his roof has stuck with me ever since.
And so, it may or may not quite satisfy the weekly assignment, but that is the best example I can come up with to demonstrate how eavesdropping can have precipitous, repercussive and embarrassing consequences.
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)What an original take on the assignment, Jack, well done! You see, laziness pays off sometimes. I laughed when I realized how your interpreted the word eavesdrop.
But I felt for your friend; it must actually have been pretty terrifying up on that roof. And when he jumped, ow ow ow!!
Nicely done.Thanks for reading and commenting- friend.
LOL, it was supposed to be a made up (fiction) story, however your take is excellent...and you make us feel sorry for you to boot. Great article.oh well, thanks for reading and commenting
You have met some interesting characters in your life. Thanks for sharing.I'll reactivate my essay called Rudy Got Blown Up. I believe the site archived it.
Thanks again and again for readign and commenting.
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