The Roof

I was nervous as JD began to climb the ladder.

“Please don’t fall!” I called up.

He brushed it off with a, “Working on roofs is no big deal for me.”

When he reached the top, he put one foot on the roof but couldn’t get footing.  It was too steep and he needed to hammer some boards into the roof to act as steps.  After hauling some boards to the roof, he went to work nailing the boards in.  Once he was off the ladder, I stepped back to watch him work.  He sat at the peak of the roof and looked around.

“You getting a nice tan up there?” I called up.

“Yeah…” his voice trailed off.

“What’s wrong?”

“The roof is too steep and I don’t have a way to tie the tarp down.”

“Okay, then just come back down.  We’ll wait for the insurance company to get someone out here.”

“I can’t.”

“Why NOT?!”

“The roof is too steep.”

“But I thought you built steps.”

“I only built 2 and I can’t reach them from here.  If I try to slide down, I’ll slide right off.”

“What were you THINKING?!” I exclaimed.  I really don’t understand why he thought 2 would be enough, or how he got up to the peak of the roof if he couldn’t reach his steps now.

We tried taking the ladder to the side of the house, where JD could scoot along the peak of the roof and get to the ladder, but it wasn’t tall enough.  Then someone suggested taking the smaller ladder and  setting it on top of one of his homemade steps so he could climb down the smaller ladder to get to the big ladder.  I did not like this idea, especially when he was trying to get rid of everything he couldn’t carry, and the hammer knocked one of his homemade steps off the roof.  I couldn’t imagine how the remaining step was supposed to hold him and the ladder if it couldn’t hold a falling hammer.

I tried not to panic, but I kept thinking, only JD would survive a tornado and kill himself by falling off the roof the next day.  I swear that boy is going to give me a heart attack.

Fortunately, the step managed to hold the ladder and JD got off the roof without incident.  I think we all learned a valuable lesson- leave the roof work to professionals.  Always.