Lila Might Need Swimming Lessons

My water comes from one of two municipal wells. The water goes into a large tank above the house. In order to fill the tank, my landlords have to got to the tank and flip a switch or turn a knob in order to let the water in. When the tank is full, they have to manually turn the water off again or the tank will over flow. This means sometimes the tank goes empty. If it is during the day, the family is usually quick to refill it, however if it happens at night or during a weekend, I may have to do without.

Recently the tank dried up around 10pm, so it was too late for me to call the landlady to ask her to fill the tank. I can’t do it myself because they let their German Shepard run around in the yard at night.

After a while I realized I didn’t know if my sink faucet was in the on or off position, since out of habit I would try to turn it on.I was also amazed at how easy it was for my brain to build memories for me of the far right or left being the off position.

Normally this would not have been a problem since I had already showered and there was a full 2 liter water bottle in the refrigerator. When the landlady filled the tank again in the morning I would hear the water running if it was open. Mystery solved.

However this particular night I needed to catch a 4am bus to Asuncion, which meant leaving the house around 3am, which meant I was not going to be in the house when the family turned the water back on, which meant I was not going to know if the water was on or not when I left the house.

Just swell

I made an educated guess based on the way the shower and another faucet in the house were and the fact that when I turned on the shower a small stream of residual water came out, which made the sink gurgle. This would not have happened had the sink been turned off.

I turned the sink in the position I hoped would be off, caught my 4am bus and hoped Lila didn’t need to learn to swim.

My backup plan was that if the sink was on, my landlady would notice the tank was emptying really quickly and assume there was a leak somewhere. I left my key to my front door under my front mat inside of the garage in case I needed to let her into the house. She already has a key to the garage.

My other back up plan was that since the next day was a Sunday, maybe the family would go out for the day, not be able to refill the tank, thus stopping the leak by default.

Thankfully when I got into the house the next evening the floor was still dry; I guessed correctly and Lila is still sans swimming lessons.