The Santa Syndrome

What were you thinking, dad? I don’t want to read about your untimely demise in the Herald obituaries. You’re not 35 years old anymore. I could almost hear my daughter Kalene yelling at me through the text.

Many of you who follow my stories might remember one called, “Potty Mouth.” If you haven’t read it, look it up on this site. It is the prequel to this story.

“Potty Mouth” is about my first attempt at bringing my septic tank up to code. Just like every event in my life, it didn’t go as planned, but then, that was eight years ago.

It had been three years since the last time my septic tank was pumped. I could have let it go four years or even five because there are only two of us living in the house now, but in the back of my mind I had this nagging feeling of not knowing exactly how full it was, and I don’t ever want it to get too full again. Nothing says, Oh Poop, like brown sewage coming up around your feet while you are taking a shower.

Being better safe than sorry, I scheduled a truck to come out to pump the tank. The weekend before the appointment, I cleaned off the top of the risers, loosened the bolts and lifted the lids. The sudden release of methane gas blowing past my face ignited as it passed the cigar in my mouth.

Luckily, Cheryl saw the flash in the back yard and came to my rescue with a fire extinguisher and a can of Febreze. It’s not the first time in my life I have had to use eyebrow pencils.

The driver and truck arrived at noon on a Monday. It was an easy job for him since everything was ready. I wondered as I talked with him, if the only conversations he had with clients were about sewage. Probably nothing about, Where did you grow up? How did you get in the business? Does your family live here in the county? What high school did you go to? Nope, your average looky-loo customer just wants to chat about poop.

As he was probing the tank with his vacuum wand, I heard a clunk and watched the hose jump. There was something other than sewage that he had sucked onto. It turned out to be my entrance baffle which I had crawled into the tank eight years prior to attach. It had come loose from the pipe it was mounted on and was lying on the bottom of the tank. This meant that I would have to go spelunking again in the septic tank from hell to reattach it.

Now let’s consider, the Santa Syndrome.

The Santa Syndrome says, “Last year I jumped down this chimney, left toys for each good boy and girl, and left the house via the same chimney.” These are assumptions made, that I could do it last year so I can also do it this year. My Santa Syndrome assumption was, eight years ago I dropped into the receiving side of the septic tank, mounted an inlet baffle, and exited again through the same tank lid.

Here is a bit of wisdom told to me by a Pastor friend: When you get to be in your 60s, your body will change. You will start losing your muscle mass and there isn’t a thing you can do about it.

I naturally laughed that comment off because obviously the old boy had let himself go.

I put on my raingear, (or in this case, poop skins), grabbed the necessary tools, and worked my way through the narrow hole in the septic tank lid. I was surprised to find that the bottom of the tank was lower than I remembered. I also realized that the last time I climbed in the tank, there weren’t 2-foot risers attached to the lid.

Note: For a visual image: a riser is a three-foot diameter by 2-foot-long plastic pipe. They are mounted over the entrance holes on the tank lid for easy access to the tank for the septic truck operator to clean.

Luckily, I had the foresight to ask Cheryl to watch me and hand me tools. It also kept her out of the bathroom, giving her no opportunity to flush on me again.

The first thing I noticed, once under the lid, was how ancient this old farm tank was. There was a wall painting of an ancient farmer chasing a cow with a pitchfork. He obviously had similar issues with cows getting on his lawn.

I also noticed the strong odor of sewer gas. Calling for a light so I could see what I was doing, Cheryl mistakenly thought I needed my cigar lit, so she dropped a lighter in the hole. The resulting flash again lit up the backyard and singed her eyebrows. Luckily, she can draw them back in with my pencils.

Mounting the baffle was relatively quick and I handed the tools back up to Cheryl, to which she said, “Yuck. I’m not touching those. They’re covered in poo!”

“Thank you dear, and you may want to pat out that smoldering patch in your hair,” I snarked.

Then I grabbed the edge of the tank lid and found that the Santa Syndrome and the warning from my Pastor friend were very true: I didn’t have the arm strength anymore to lift myself out of the septic tank. I was about four inches shy of being able get my knee on the top of the lid.

It appeared that Santa had gained a few pounds in the eight years, while at the same time losing shoulder and arm strength.

This realization caused both depression and panic. I asked Cheryl to bring me a bucket and a rope. My plan was to tie the rope to the bucket handle, flip the bucket upside down to stand on, use the boosted height to get my knee up onto the lid, and once out I would pull the bucket out with the rope.

I stood on the bucket and used my hands to push up on the lid. I strained, “I got it! I got it! I ain’t got it.” Fat Santa didn’t have the strength.

Okay. At least Cheryl is here. What if I had tried this when she was gone? She would have come home many hours later to find me dead in the tank. But no – I still had my phone in my shirt pocket. I could call the fire department! No way! First, the 911 operator wouldn’t believe me. Then, when the fire department arrived, they would all get a good laugh. And the next day, the scanner and the Herald would report: Fat Santa gets stuck in septic tank.

No, there had to be another way. Think man, think! A rope!

“Go to the shed and bring out the rope and I’ll tie it under my arms, and you give me a tug,” I told Cheryl.

It seemed like a good idea, and she brought the rope, and I tied it around my chest under my armpits. Cheryl stood three feet away and pulled on the rope like she was pulling a pig out of the sty, which she alluded to later to her friends.

“Pull! Pull! Come on, you can do it!” I shouted, but to no avail. I was still four inches short of getting my knee on the lid.

“It’s no use!” I pulled my phone from my pocket and realizing the humiliation I was about to bring upon myself, I dialed 9-1-..

“Hold that last number. She-Hulk can do this!”

Cheryl straddled the hole, reached down, grabbed the looped rope around my chest and pulled 220 pounds straight up in a deadlift.

“Come – on – fat boy – come on,” she shouted as she strained her back and legs.

Rising the four inches, I rested my knee on the lid to support myself.

“We’re good. We’re good,” I said.

We both sat slouched in lawn chairs, heads back, staring at the sky.

“You are never going in the hole again,” Cheryl moaned.

“I’m not 35 anymore. I’m not going in that hole again.”

“It was like pulling a 220-pound calf, and you’re covered in the same slime.”

“So true. And by the way, thanks for throwing that lit lighter into the tank. I don’t think I will have to groom my nose and ear hairs now for at least a month.”

And we closed the lids on another septic tank story.

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