Bear with me on this one. I am at work. My wife is at work. My children are at home. Here in lies the problem. Let me summarize the last 4,327,953 phone calls from home. Keep in mind I get a smaller percentage of them than my saintly wife receives, and when I am actually home my children gravitate to any other room in the home to avoid the “can you help me with this” question that I usually come up with as I see them idle in front of the, pick an appliance, TV, computer, microwave, refrigerator, but never the dishwasher, clothes washer, or dryer. By the way, school has been out for about two weeks.

It is a gorgeous day today. It has rained on and off for the last 40 days (pun intended) and I am suffering through a quiet day with not even minor emergencies. Queue the phone. “Dad, we have no power.” What happened? “The TV and the lights went off.” Do you know why? “The power went out.” Now how can you argue with that kind of logic?

Now keep in mind that I have approved both the electric company and the cable company working near my house cutting down trees and adding new cable to our neighborhood. I know and work with these people and have a soft spot in my heart for those that have to work outside in any kind of weather. Bill, my son’s name, would you look outside and see if everything is OK with the cable and electric guys? “That’s the cool part dad.” Now I am thinking, do I remember where the electrical stuff is on the rescue and what is the safety area around a transmission line? What’s cool Bill?

“The cable guys drove their truck straight up our hill really fast, and then the power went out.” What about the tree guys. “Oh, they’re on their cell phones standing by the tree they cut.” Can you see any wires? “Yeah, lying under the tree.” “Can I go outside and play?” No you can’t go out and play. Hang on a second Bill.

I pick up line two and speed dial: “Electric Company, may I help you?” Yes, thanks (see I can be nice when I want to be) there’s no power at my house. “We don’t have any outages reported.” Well we do at my house, I think someone was cutting trees and one hit a line. “Now sir, you know we have to give our approval before you are allowed to cut any trees near our lines, we discourage that type of thing for safety reasons.” Now I hear in the background “truck six to dispatch, send another truck and the supervisor up to Pete’s house we dropped a tree on the lines there. You may get some calls.” The operator comes back on the line “you’re Pete from the fire department aren’t you?” Yes I am. “Don’t cut anymore trees; we’re going up to your house now. Thanks for calling.” Click.

Bill this is dad. “Dad, there are more people from the electric company here, and they are not too happy.” I guess close calls don’t just happen to the fire service. I can honestly say that my wife was right. You don’t know how much that hurts to acknowledge that. She told me not to cut any of the trees. Let the experts do it. I’m glad I finally listened.