Here's the story.
I'm 12. It's yet another hot, dry summer day in Iran.
Aren't they all?
So I'm just chilling in the family room, minding
my business, reading a book, shuffling some papers,
maybe I'm just
daydreaming. Is there something so awful about daydreaming?
No.
There isn't. So don't act like there is. Suddenly, out of nowhere come Mom. Dad. Sister. Maid. Second Cousin.
Maid's kid. The cats. Everybody. Anybody. Who are all these people.
"GET UP!" They command. "IT'S TIME TO CARRY BUCKETS
OF WATER TO THE ROOF."
To what?
"GET UP! EVERYBODY HAS TO PULL THEIR WEIGHT."
Their what? Look, Dudes, relax. Can't you see I'm reading?
"WE NEED TO TAKE THE BUCKETS TO THE ROOF."
Look, can someone just explain why...
"STOP BEING SO LAZY! IF YOU WANT TO STAY COOL YOU HAVE TO
CARRY BUCKETS TO THE ROOF LIKE EVERYONE ELSE!"
It's antiquated technology. Big, ugly roof coolers sitting way up on the roof that need gallons of
water to operate. That's how they run. The water goes in the base of the cooler and as it evaporates, a fan carries the
cool air down into the house.
That's the deal: Gallons of water. Must be carried. To the
roof. In the worse heat of the day.
...Ummmm, I think carrying the water up three flights of stairs will
heat us up more than the AC will cool us down. Why don't we all
just relax and...
"YOU LAZY BUM! GET UP NOW!"
OK, OK, chill.
I get up and join the virtuous chain gang.
Dad hands out a bucket for each person. We fill them with the water from the
swimming
pool (a new house now, bigger pool than the one you saw in my
First Apocalypse). We lug these things up the stairs. Spilling
water on the marble. Slip and fall hazard, but never mind.
I can't believe this is the plan. I must do something. I ask a question.
"So...what's up with this water hauling. The AC broken or
something?"
"STOP WHINING! EVERYBODY KNOWS THE COOLERS NEED WATER
TO OPERATE! BUCKETS AND BUCKETS OF WATER! AND
THE PUMP IS BROKEN! SO WE HAVE TO CARRY IT. WHINER!"
Can't we fix the pump?
"STOP WHINING! THE PUMP WORKS FINE. BUT THERE'S NOT
ENOUGH WATER PRESSURE IN THE CITY DURING THE
HOTTEST HOURS OF THE DAY. THE PUMP CAN'T GET THE WATER
TO THE ROOF WHEN WE NEED IT MOST! WHINER.
"
So...why don't we just pump in the morning when there is pressure?
"STOP WHINING! - I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'RE STILL WHINING AFTER ALL MY PATIENT EXPLANATION!
I JUST TOLD YOU! IF WE PUMP IN THE MORNING IT WILL
EVAPORATE BY
THE TIME NOON COMES ALONG! DON'T YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ROOFS!!? AND HEAT??! AND EVAPORATION? WHINER!
STOP WHINING AND HAUL BUCKET!"
I schlep the water in thoughtful, beaten silence.
Do you see the task at hand? My poor sweaty family. Congratulating themselves over how hardworking and responsible they
are in comparison to me. Shoulders dislocating left
and right as they lurch with buckets.
3 coolers. Each takes 9
buckets of water. So we have to fill 27 buckets full of water, haul them across the yard, through the house,
up two flights of stairs, out to the roof (which is flat, in case you're wondering). Two
coolers are on the first roof level. The 3rd one is yet another flight up stairs up on the top roof level.
3 sets of 9 buckets move up 2 stories
- that's 54 bucket
flights. Plus 9 buckets one last
flight to the tippy top. That's a total of 63 bucket
flights a day. Plus laterals.
And I see they are
committed
to
doing this EVERY
DAY all summer long. Ridiculous. Too ridiculous. I can stay silent no longer.
Look, why don't we just...
"STOP WHINING!"
I'm saying we should just...
"LAZY PRE-TEENS!"
Can't we just fill the bathtub on the third floor up with
water in the morning every day and haul the buckets from there?
"IF YOU DON'T STOP WHINING WE'LL...WHAT?"
The bathtub. On the third floor.
"THE BATHTUB?"
Yes. Third floor. It holds water, doesn't it. Maybe even 27 buckets worth?
"YOU WHINER! THE PUMP DOESN'T PUMP TO THE ROOF AT MID-DAY, HOW WILL IT
PUMP TO THE THIRD FLOOR BATHTUB?"
Right. That's why I said we should fill the tub up IN THE MORNING!
"IN THE MORNING?! WHY...hey. Ahem. That...just might work."
Just might work? OF COURSE it will work. Why was there any resistance
to this idea?
See what just happened? Despite the fact that they DIDN'T DESERVE IT after yelling
at me, I saved everyone in that household some major LABOR. How
much? We
cut out 27 buckets up
the first two flights, that's 54
bucket flights a day of labor.
By
simply daring to ask questions in
the face of totalitarian, fascistic, everybody's-got-to-do-their-fair-share
righteousness, I saved
us
54 bucket flights of labor a day.
Multiply that by a summer. Think
of all the torn muscles
and dislocated
tendons and aggravation I prevented.
And
yet, even after that, even though my thinking was
the equivalent of 54 bucket flights of labor a day and should
have
been
thus credited to me, they still
made me carry the remaining buckets after that all
summer.
Despite the fact that my innovation reduced
the workload by 85%, I still had to chip in with
the hauling of 9 buckets up one flight of stairs (to the tippy top)
and 18 bucket laterals. Next time I will patent my innovation and
demand royalties up front before
telling people how to save labor.
Mark this lesson well, children.
[Note: I have still
not
learned this lesson. Right now I'm helping the dudes out with
the Focusfusion.org website, without anything in writing about what I stand to gain
from
it in the event that it works. My efforts are all voluntary. But for
the record, if it works, I should be allowed to slack in peace
for the rest of my life. And write whimsical stories, etc.
You
know there are some
parallels here. I get some flack
for pursuing the fusion thing. People smugly tell
me I'm wasting
my time. But each dismissive comment
reminds me of the yelling I endured on that long
hot summer when I
dared to question
conventional cooler filling wisdom.
At that time, the questioning paid off. Hopefully this time the questioning
(e.g., research, for which we are
seeking funds) also pays off. And
if it doesn't? Well, it's business as usual. Global
warming, long hot summers, irritable,
righteous people, nothing new. But if it does? Wow. I
couldn't live with myself if I didn't
pursue the questions. Yes, that's focusfusion.org. Check it out.
Be another fool for fusion!]
The other important thing to note here about the bucket story is that this elegant solution
did not satisfy some people on a deeper emotional level.
If you
ask some of the people who were there during that long hot summer
about the coolers and the chores, they will say "Oh yes! Remember
how we had to haul 30 buckets of water up 3 flights of stairs every
day in the summer. Oh, we had it tough." Every day?
My transcendentally
lazy ass could only handle this for
one day before it kicked in with the solution.
But unlike me, some
people
nostalgically
conjure up and multiply the hardship to get glory mileage out
of it. Like it's a virtue! Longsuffering
bingo. Something
to hold over the grandchildren? Proletariat heroism.
Ah, but I wax judgmental. Clearly I'm bitter because no one ever apologized
for calling me a lazy whiner. And I feel a fool for not leveraging
my knowledge to improve my own
status relative to the others - to exempt myself from the proletariat.
And the final insult is that my dad, who called me
names on that day, claimed recently
that he was the one who came up with the bathtub
idea.
But it was me! ME! It was MY socratic method
and MY resistance
in the face of tyranny that did it.
Good Lord, now I really AM whining. Reduced to petty blatherings about bucket flights like it means something.
OK. Ajaban L'helmellah. The Almighty loves us all. The transcendentally lazy, and
the longsuffering bucket flight carrying
heroes.
The honest, hardworking souls who
would have been perfectly happy laboring
every day in the long hot
summer
to earn their reward of keeping cool
one bucket-step at a time. 
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