Last night, it was once again driven home to me why I may not be the best choice when there is an emergency/crisis/problem.

After a week or so of our toilet running, necessitating the old "jiggle the handle" routine, it finally came to a head last night (heh heh...). E-- had gone out for the evening with a friend and I was vegging on the sofa. I heard a strange noise; after a few moments of processing, I realized that the sound was running water and it was probably going to take more than a little handle jiggle to fix. I rushed into the bathroom only to find water pouring out of the toilet and pooling on the carpet.

Yes, I immediately found the shut off valve and put it to proper use. But then I realized that the water was going to have to go somewhere (and in fact, already was). I rushed downstairs to let my neighbor know that she might be wise to expect water to be pouring through her bathroom ceiling. No sooner were the words out of my mouth than drops of water formed across most of the ceiling.

Then back upstairs to place a call to the landlord. While I tried to explain what had happened and was still happening, my neighbor was loudly detailing how pissed off she was about the whole thing, the possibility that the ceiling was going to cave in and questioning why the hell this hadn't been taken care of when the plumbers were out here a year ago (all of which she was completely justified in. Plumbers were called in because her bathroom in particular was atrocious. Bulging walls, leaks, mold... and several other possible problems. However, there was patchwork done and no one *ever* contacted us upstairs to examine our bathroom - where all of us suspected much of the problem was coming from).

[semi-appropos tangent: as I was typing the last sentence, a daddy long legs lowered itself down about a foot from my face. An embarassing squeal from my mouth and a rushing from the room promptly followed. As I made E-- come in and deal with it, he commented, "I thought you were the one that was calm about spiders. Didn't your sister always come and make you deal with them?" To which I replied, "Yes, but she's not here, you are, and I'm not so calm when they suddenly appear inches from my face." Add to that the fact that the spider was lost track of before we could get it outside and I'm feeling just stupid...]

Anyway.

Landlord was called, she called a plumber and I tracked E-- down and asked to come home. Mostly cause after all that, I really wasn't sure what the next step was. No longer was water in a pool on my carpet and the downstairs ceiling wasn't really threating to fall in anymore. But I always feel like I'm missing something.

The plumber showed up around 11:00pm (quote from my landlord: "I'm suprised how long it's taken me to find a plumber on a friday night") and "fixed" the problem. We're actually getting a new toilet in about an hour (because someone finally listened to the fact that either it gets replaced or there will be yet another late night plumber call in our future).

What threw me is that my downstairs neighbor repeatedly commented on how panicked I seemed. Throughout the rushing up and down the stairs and the phone calls, I was aware of how shaky my voice sounded. To the best of my knowledge, I did everything the way I should have. But my feeling that I was missing something, that my neighbor who just had neck/back surgery and was on lots of meds and that somehow, I was at fault - just wouldn't go away.

Is it simply a matter of the more time dealing with problems/emergencies, the better one gets at it? And the calmer I look and sound? Will I ever be someone that others feel confident about contacting in an emergency? Or will my first reaction always be to either shriek in suprise or a sort of blank, "wha? huh?" and then a passing off of the problem?