Be a Dick ...
... and other invaluable life lessons I learned from the natural-disaster experience.
One of the first things I did after my house got flooded was send the following message in a Facebook group called the Perkiomen Trail:
Is there Anyone on here have previous experience with house flooding and is able to answer a few questions for me?
Now look, I’m not one of those insufferable grammarians, but this language was pretty atrocious by even my standards. The typos — not to mention the fact that I was reaching out to a nature-loving Facebook group — gives you a pretty good indication of where my head was at this point. I was desperate, and I didn’t have the slightest idea where to go for help first.
5 feet back in ‘06
The responses came in fast.
Call your insurance company and document everything and anything you think you might need to. Take notes and the names of everyone you talk to. I've been through a hurricane and dealt with that. Just try to remain calm and organized, one user urged me before becoming entrenched in a sub-thread with another user on what actually warrants good documentation.
My boyfriend works for total restoration contracting. They’ll be dealing with flooding all weekend most likely. Call them, another user advised.
But it was the specificity of a user whose name rhymes with Dog that jumped out at me most:
I had house flood in 2006 (5ft of water)
After a few responses on the Perkiomen Trail’s discussion board, followed by a couple DMs, Dog and I eventually decided to discuss my situation over a formerly popular communication vehicle known as the telephone.
Dog was the first of myriad phone calls I would make in those initial post-flood months. He was kind, patient and full of practical advice. My voice was shaky when I first spoke, and I rambled on and on about stuff that didn’t matter — and some people are saying they released the dam at the wrong time and that contributed to level of flooding that occurred — but Dog hung in there with me until I asked about what he’d done after he was flooded in the mid-aughts (which happened to be right around the time Scott Weiland’s super group Velvet Revolver was at its peak).
Dog spoke to me about the importance humidifiers and mold remediation specialists, about independent claims adjustors and leaning on neighbors. I even took notes while he spoke (the photo in the opening of this post is a shot of the desperate crazed sleep-deprived notes I took during our call).
The first piece of advice Dog offer proved to be the most pivotal. Be a Dick, he said to me several times throughout the conversation. That advice hasn’t always been the easiest to follow through on, but it’s certainly been the most beneficial. See, one of my most self-destructive traits is my obsession with coming off as a nice guy. Don’t get me wrong, I can be a total asshole, and I have been many, many times throughout my life. Those incidents are generally either for comedic purposes or because I lost my cool over something that doesn’t matter, though.
When it comes to the things that do matter, things like say, haggling over the terms of your budget with the contractor or reminding the flooring guy to fix something he screwed up, I’m generally more apt to let things slide out of this desperate need to come off as nice. It’s this same obsession with getting people to like me that leads to problematic behavior like performing stand-up comedy or writing a newsletter all about your family personal ordeal. In other words, my inherent niceness would have caused me to avoid being the very thing that Dog was repeatedly telling me I needed to be: A huge dick.
I say “would have” because I have largely managed to avoid my Achilles heel throughout the rebuilding process.
Dog’s advice proved invaluable on a number of occasions during the past year, and now that I’ve seen how effective a dickish approach to life can be, I’m a convert. If by some chance you’re reading this, Dog, you should know you’ve got a real future in the life-coaching business, my friend.
And readers, take it from me (and Dog): Don’t be a afraid to be a dick from time to time. Sometimes it’s the only way to get things done.