For your safety

This is an update on my post of a few weeks ago, in which I avoided a broken ankle.  My husband cleverly fixed the offending basement step.  Yay!  But now the whole staircase suspiciously makes a squeaky chirp with every step, so when I walk up or down the basement steps it sounds like a tiny aviary.

Then a few days ago, in the course of the following conversation, I found out that another part of our house is architecturally challenged.  Oddly, my discovery stemmed from a discussion about Scout merit badges:

Son:  Dad, did you hear about the chess merit badge?!

Husband:  Yes, I heard about it.  Will it enable you to repave the driveway?

Son:  No.  There is no driveway paving merit badge.

Husband: Will it enable you to clean the gutters in the fall and the spring?

Son: No.

Husband:  Then I see no practical purpose to the chess merit badge. But I saw in your Boy’s Life magazine how one scout built a deck for his Eagle project.

Me:  Yeah, that was in Angie Dilmore’s article!  (She is my friend and is an actual published writer!)

Husband:  Well, we could use a new deck.

Son:  Dad.  The Eagle project is not allowed to benefit yourself.

Husband: You could at least learn those skills while doing your Eagle project.  There is already a loose board on the deck that needs to be replaced before someone puts their foot through it.

Me:  What?! Which plank is it?

Husband:  I’m not telling you.  Just take a BIG step when you go out on the deck.

Me:  I would like not to put my foot through a rotting board.  I already nearly broke my neck by going down the basement stairs when nobody BOTHERED to tell me the step was broken.

Husband:  But if I tell you which plank it is, you’re going to put up all kinds of warning signs and tape which will strangle people.

* * * * * 

It is true that I may have slightly overreacted to the broken basement step issue by putting up several spider-webs’ worth of freezer tape across the staircase, as a warning to myself and other hapless mothers who might mistakenly use the broken step. 

This time I have not posted anything to warn people away from the faulty plank on the deck.  So when you come over, be sure to use the front door.  When I suggest that we go out back to the deck, you should insist on staying in the living room.