What would Stew do if he had a brain?

We had a water softener sales & service company visit our home the other day. After about eight years, Stew finally noticed that he's hardly ever put any salt pellets in the water softener tub. Ask Stew to define "hardly ever" and his face turns real red and smoke starts pouring out his ears as he storms away after posing a rhetorical "do I look like the #$!%&`-ing Culligan Man?" So, my guess is that "hardly ever" translates into "never" in Stew speak. Besides the obvious signs of a hard water problem, you'd think the fact that Stew's flesh has slowly been falling off the bone would give a strong indication a problem exists. Instead, Stew would just walk around the house muttering, "boy, my eczema has really been acting up ever since we moved in here..."

Anyway, some water softener expert dude showed up. Let's just call him "Dan" because that's his name. Oh, in the interest of full disclosure, I need to let you know that I am retelling this story from facts as presented to me by a witness I'll call "Claire." You see, I am not allowed to run free in the house whenever a repair man is visiting because my incessant barking freaks Stew out, so I was locked in our office when Dan was here. Claire was in Stew's arms, so I'm trusting her story is accurate.

As the two men and a baby made their way downstairs to the laundry room, Stew explained that he rarely puts salt in the softener... maybe just a couple times a year. See how his story changed? This means he's embarrassed by the truth, so telling this little fib protects him from being exposed as the dumbass he really is. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, I think I heard Stew say something like, "ya, I'm thinking we're gonna need about a 30,000 grain tank that's high efficiency with demand initiated regeneration capabilities..." This tells me Stew must have Googled "how to fake like you know what you're talking about + water softener" the night before.

The group arrived at the scene (the corner of the laundry room), and this is where Claire says Stew's ego was ruthlessly crushed by the one called "Dan." As I'm told, Dan walked over to the softener and looked at it for about two seconds. Still facing the softener, he turned his head back toward Stew and asked "you say the softener has never cycled on its own?" to which Stew replied, "right." Dan turned back to the softener and pointed at some dials and asked Stew, "you see these little pegs on this smaller dial... you need to press at least one of them outward so the little dial engages the larger control dial and the softener cycles." Stew tried to look shocked, as if a grumpy old troll that lives behind the water softener has secretly been coming out of hiding to make sure all the little pegs are flipped inward so the softener doesn't produce the hideous sounds it makes when it cycles. Regardless, Stew's dumbassity was exposed. Stew even asked Dan as he was leaving if this was "the dumbest service call you've ever had?" To which Dan mumbled something like "Ohhh... I get all kinds." So, I took Dan's reply to actually mean "No way, dude! You are clearly the biggest dumbass I have ever met. By the way, thanks for the colossal waste of my time... you're lucky I'm not a plumber, otherwise, I'd be charging you $200 an hour. I cannot wait to tell the boys back at the shop about you. Next time have your wife look at the softener before calling me."

In other news, Claire showed me her best Nick Nolte mugshot impression today. Check it out...