Setting Your Pillow on Fire will Not Get You What You Want

After the third day without hot water, I set my pillow on fire to attract the attention of this gas man.  This did not go as I intended.

 

 

To understand this you need a bit  of background. Household gas service in Ecuador  is not piped into the house, instead it is delivered by men who troll neighborhoods playing a repetitive tune from a speaker atop their truck like the ice cream man.   Monday through Saturday our gas guy rolls by at 7:25 in the morning.  Our job is to flag him down and give him $3 for a new tank of propane.When you run out of gas you have no hot water.

 

 

Second thing you need to know about Ecuador: Spanish Colonial Architecture.  Like in snow country where they have steep tin roofs  to prevent snow buildup, or in the SW where there is so little rain that roofs are flat, Spanish Colonial is an architectural style.  Mostly as I can figure out, Spanish Colonial consists of tall walls with lots of litigious pointy things on top. Picture spikes or glass shards on top of metal gates and you get the picture.  In the modern era the tendency is to top those pointy things with an electric fence. ( Sort of like a ADT alarm sign in your front yard.) Spikes and electrical shocks become status symbols.

 

 

The last thing to know is that the Airbnb we were staying at has two stories plus an outside stairwell to the street level. It has lots of pointy things, a locked gate and an electric fence.

 

 

 

I was sleeping when I heard gas truck song.  Quick sleep-addled math concluded I was not going to make it to street level to catch him in time. I ran out onto the second floor balcony to catch his attention, but I could not get a line of sight  on his truck. I couldn’t shout over his music.  So I threw my pillow off the balcony hoping that a falling pile of polyester would translate to STOP!

 

 

At this point I  should mention that I never went to college on a sports scholarship.

 

As I hurled my pillow it went up and then descended towards street level a bit abruptly. More than a bit. My pillow did a perfect arc and landed ON the electric fence.   There was a sharp kerr-POW as it impaled itself in sparks.  I was staring at the fireworks of sparks when I noticed that the pillow had caught on fire.  I panicked questioning how I was going to get blackened polyester off the fence when enough of it  had burnt away so the pillow  separated itself from impalement. Success! Then like the Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons I watched as the remains of the still burning pillow  teetered in slow motion off the fence and fell  to the street below.

 

The Gas Man never saw it. 

 

Neighbors did. 

 

The Airbnb now has new pillows, compliments of me.