I Finally Get My Own Bailout

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the term “bailout” has been used since about 1951 to describe “the act of saving or rescuing something (such as a business) from money problems.”  This noun is different from the intransitive verb, “bail out” which can mean jumping from an airplane (hopefully with a parachute) or ironically, “to abandon a harmful or difficult situation.”  Of course, any news article that states that the Government “bailed out” the banks does NOT mean they abandoned them or jumped out of an airplane with them. A closer meaning of the expression would be that we the taxpayers paid to keep the bankers out of jail. With bail.

Say it a couple of times: bail, bail, bail, bail. It becomes a tongue twister just like “toy boat.” And it is from a boat that a bail comes from.  A bail is a small bucket used to scoop water from a sinking vessel and dump it overboard. Hopefully, there are enough bail and bailers to dump the water faster than it is coming in.  Scoop and dump, scoop and dump — as fast as you can, you Bail Out the boat. Scoop and dump money and you bail out the banks, or the car manufacturers, or a foreign government.

Today I was reminded that I should not be complaining that I have never been bailed out. All this time I had forgotten the many meanings of “bailout” and have been waiting for my chunk of tax funds to rescue me from money problems. But apparently, my bailouts, and yes, there have been more than one; have come in a different form.

Back in the late 70s, I lived my bell-bottomed, Huck-A-Poo shirt-wearing life in a basement apartment.  To maintain this level of luxury, I worked two jobs while I eagerly waiting for Reagan’s trickle down economy to benefit me. His use of a water metaphor should have warned me.

One night I came home to find four inches of water throughout the apartment. Water was spewing from the toilet and the sink drain. Neighbors above me continued to shower and wash clothes, unaware of what was happening underneath them. While the plumbing was eventually fixed, I still had to spend many hours, scooping up water, dumping it by the potful into my washing machine. With the drain hose looped out the window, I was able to finally, bail out my apartment.  Thanks, President Reagan, for that massive trickle down effect.

All this came back to me today while we were busy doing Saturday household chores — a large part of which is laundry. Yes, the washing machine broke, and of course it was mid-cycle and full of water. We had to remove an entire load of wash, piece by piece, and wring them out. Then, we scooped water out of the washer, by the potful, and dumped it in the sink.  In addition to the distinct feeling of deja-vu came the realization that our long-wished for a bailout had finally arrived.

At least no one had to spring us from jail.