Scott’s Visit

Scott’s cutting carrots while I fill a pot with water at the sink outside. We’re talking through the wall, a domestic and peaceful heterosexual male couple making dinner together, nothing out of the ordinary in Panama’s largest indigenous autonomous region. Then the sink explodes.

More precisely, I turn on the faucet and the faucet head rockets into the zinc roof, which booms with the impact. I scream in surprise at the near face-to-missile collision, then in annoyance when I realize how much water is spraying directly into my chest and then in pain as the ants begin to bite my feet.

I have brutal ants in my yard and there are a few key spots, like directly in front of my sink, that are safe. Once you exit these demilitarized zones, you’re screwed. After jumping back from the gushing water, I’m standing in the North Korea of my yard and receiving the full five star treatment. Unfortunately, I can’t escape until I locate the faucet head and stop the flow.

By now, Scott has emerged and is contributing to the situation by standing on the porch and laughing at me. To be fair, it’s pitch black and I have the only headlamp and therefore the only light. So I dance to avoid the ants and search for the faucet head.

Ignoring everything I learned in 9^th grade physics, I search around the sink instead of inside of it (for some reason it didn’t occur to me that the faucet head, which shot straight up, would have come straight back down), which is why I saw the scorpion before I saw the faucet head.

The scorpion is scurrying away from the sink and towards Scott, so I grab a length of PVC pipe laying near me and begin pounding at the scorpion. Now, I’m still getting bit by the North Korea ants, so I’m still dancing, but now I’m dancing and hunched over swinging a club, like a stereotypical depiction of a caveman, only less sophisticated. I slam the scorpion, who manages to not die the first four times (he just kept getting buried in the dirt) but succumbs on the fifth. But there’s no time to celebrate this small victory, because water is still gushig from my faucet, I don’t know where the head is and my feet feel like someone is setting them on fire.

Finally, I check inside the sink and find the faucet head. As I put it back on, I get blasted again by the water, effectively soaking any remaining inch of dry shirt that I had. But the water is under control and the scorpion is dead, which means I get to fill the pot, go back inside and cry like a five year old girl over my sore and swollen red feet.

We made a few unrelated videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwqlVSKAlFU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwxI1S3ulrQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEVtIZTIcyY