I Experience An Attack of Machines

Full transcript of the My True Ghost Stories episode “I Experience An Attack of Machines.” Listen to this episode.

Hello, and welcome to episode 68 of My True Ghost Stories. There's a Bob Dylan song called Everything is Broken, and this story is not about exactly the same thing that that song is about. It is about everything being broken. There's this expression called when it rains, it pours, and this story is also along this line, everything being broken, raining, and pouring. However, this story is called the Attack of the Machines.

It's a little more dramatic than when it rains, it pours, or everything is broken. This is the Attack of the Machines. This is an expression that my father made up when all the appliances are breaking. And it does seem to happen. It doesn't only happen to me.

It's this thing that happens to families and individuals and houses. A whole bunch of things break at once, and it is not always a bunch of things that you bought at the same time and have reached the end of their life. It's just some sort of strange energy that comes into your house and breaks all your stuff. And I'm starting to think that there's more to it than just failed machinery. In my life, it has happened at all sorts of interesting times, and it just sort of adds this huge, awful exclamation point at the end of whatever I'm going through at that time.

So this particular Attack of the Machines started with something small. It was actually my eyeglasses, which are not really a machine, but they're like a machine. I certainly depend on them enough. So it was snowing in Brooklyn. It was a beautiful snowy evening, and I'm walking through the untouched snow, leaving the first footprints on the sidewalk of this newly fallen snow.

And the snow had already probably gone up to an inch or two. So there were some drifts. And as I'm walking through this beautiful winter wonderland, the lens of my glasses, my right lens fell out into the snow. And it was dark. Well, it wasn't dark.

There's the street lights, but there was no light really to look at it. And plus it was a, you know, transparent eyeglass lens, and it was in white snow in the dark. Now I did give it the college try, and I got my flashlight out, and I searched around in this little snow drift on the side of the sidewalk. And I was unable to find the glasses. And plus it, it was like over a five foot radius that it had fallen, because I hadn't quite realized it had fallen until I noticed that my vision was all blurry.

So I really didn't know where it was. And so I had to give up and go in the house. And I did go back outside the next morning, but by that time people had shoveled their sidewalk. So God knows where it was. It was probably in a snow drift in the street.

So I had to give up on those glasses. And what I had to do was start wearing these spare glasses that I have that are really loose on me, and I can't fix them. So whenever I look down, they fall off. And the other thing that happened at the beginning of the attack of the machines was my phone. My phone started to act really badly and very unmanageably.

And it was, it would like refuse to text for a whole day, or wouldn't receive any texts for a whole day. Or it would just randomly go off the internet. And it was stuff that I depended on. You know, like I use my phone to find out when the bus is coming. And so it wasn't just that I wanted to look up celebrity gossip on my phone.

It was like really my lifestyle. I don't need to make excuses as to why I need my phone. But I need my phone. I guess I'm still a little embarrassed about how dependent I am on my phone when I didn't use to have one when I was growing up, but now I need it. So what happened was I had to get a new phone.

So I have a new phone, which means I can't understand my phone. And then I was trying to understand this new phone with glasses that fell off every time I looked down. The other thing that was happening was that the new phone that was meant to replace my old phone that was having all the weird problems with not texting and going off the internet, the new phone as pretty and shiny as it was was starting to have the exact same problems as the other phone. So it wasn't even an improvement just a hassle because I couldn't understand how to work it. So as this was all going on, New York City was going through quite a cold spell.

We're still going through quite a cold spell as I record this episode. So while this was going on, no glasses, bad phone, bad new phone, I had to turn the heat up because it was so cold outside and so cold inside. So I went turn the heat up. I noticed the heat was not on at all. And so I clicked the heat on and I heard the click of the furnace go on and then I heard a horrible cranking sound.

Or I don't know what. I can't even describe it. I can just describe it as bad. It was not a good sound. So I turned it back off and I said, oh God, no, please no.

And I could tell that this was how the attack of the machines begins, small things, broken eye glasses, broken phone, and now the furnace won't turn on and is making a strange sound. When this happened, it was late in the afternoon on a Saturday and I thought maybe it's the pilot light, maybe the pilot light went out, which I really prayed maybe it was the pilot light because it had been very windy the night before and sometimes I don't know why. Sometimes the pilot light of the furnace goes out even if we don't open the door, it goes out on the furnace. So I went downstairs and I looked at it and the pilot light was on and I don't know. I don't understand it.

And I also knew that it was Saturday evening and no plumber was going to come over here without charging me some huge, off hours fee and I don't want to do that. I don't want to pay that. So I called my new neighbor who's a total doll. I called him and I said, can you come look at my furnace and he is like next story just bought the house and he's renovating the whole place like by himself with a couple of handymen. So he came over to check it out.

I was so grateful. Maybe I'm going to call him Vincent. Maybe Vincent can help me. Now that was a brief period in my life that I, Jennifer, wanted to become a plumber and I was really into it and I bought some books and I did some practicing and I took a few lessons from local handymen and I tried to understand all this stuff but I could not understand it. Most of it was over my head except you know how to snake a drain and stuff like that.

So most of it was over my head. So I gave up on being a plumber and when handymen used to come over though during this period of time when I wanted to be a plumber I used to try and show off my knowledge of all the plumbing which I really didn't have any and I'm sure I sounded sort of ridiculous. I think I probably sounded like I was trying to show off. And I remember talking to this one plumber and his assistant just looked at me and he said, I don't know what you're talking about. It was real New York City moment and that is when I gave up trying to impress plumbers with my plumbing knowledge.

So I was definitely not going to do that with Vincent when he came over. So Vincent came over and he went in my furnace room and he looked at the tubes and stuff and he said, this furnace is completely dry. It's very dangerous. Scared the living day lights out of me but he said, this is very dangerous. Thank God your automatic shut off worked and then it turned out that the automatic flow valve that brings the water into the furnace was broke.

So he was able to manually fill up the furnace and he said and so the heat came back on. God bless Vincent. He came back on and he said, so this should last you about a week or so. So you need to get a furnace guy in here. But that brought me a couple of days.

So then on Monday I was able to call the furnace guys for a non-emergency of hours, be it just a regular fee, which they charged me but they came, they fixed, I paid, I was so grateful. I had a furnace now. I had a furnace now and they said, everything else is working. You just needed the new flow valve. Yay.

So it was a bad week. It was starting off with some major inconveniences, not the least of which was a broken furnace. But I was able to relax and I was able to use the glasses to watch television because they didn't fall off because I lay down when I watched television and I look up a little bit at the screen. So I was able to watch television at night, which is one of my favorite things to do. So this night of the week of the attack of the machines, I'm laying on the couch and I'm settled in to probably some hallmark Christmas romance, which I love to relax to.

That's my nightcap. And I'm laying there watching this hallmark Christmas romance. It was past Christmas but I was still watching it. And my daughter comes into the living room where I'm laying there watching my TV show and she says, mom, there's no hot water. I've been trying to get hot water for the last, you know, whatever.

I had heard her running the shower for some time but I thought she was in the shower. But she comes out and she says, there's no hot water. And I'm laying there and I knew the signs. I knew the eyeglasses going and the phone going and the furnace breaking. I knew that this could be the beginning of the attack of the machines.

And so I said, oh, no, please, no, no. And I paused my movie and I hold myself up off the couch and I went downstairs into our basement. Now, this is not just a cellar. This is a finished basement with bedrooms and carpets and clothes on the floor and all of that. I went down there and I hear the water heater pumping away and I walked towards the door of the boiler room where the plumbers were just a few days ago fixing the furnace.

And I opened the door and the heat design and next to the furnace is the water heater. And it's cranking away and there's a slow, steady trickle of water coming out of it onto the floor to the point that it is a flood and it is flooding out the door onto the floor onto the carpet. And I thought, okay, it's official. It is the attack of the machines. And although I know from my experience that the attack of the machines means that the universe is trying to tell me something and there's a lesson to be learned in this and there's action I need to take, I could not stand there in the doorway of my daughter's flooding bedroom and stand there pondering what life lesson is this supposed to be.

I could not do that. So instead, I panicked. I panicked. Is this water just going to keep coming? Is it just going to keep flooding the basement?

Probably yes. Is there a gas leak? Is the water heater broken? Is gas leaking into our house and we're going to get poisoning and we're going to have to go to the hospital. And I had long ago, given up trying to pretend that I understand all this type of plumbing and heating stuff.

So I just panicked. I started freaking out and my daughter, God bless her, saw the panic and found on the internet a 24 hour plumbing service and I of course had to, you know, lament, do you know how much that's going to cost because it was 1130 at night at this point. Do you know how much that's going to cost? And she's like, we have to do it and I did not put up much of an argument about this because, you know, it needed to be done. No matter what lesson the universe was trying to teach me, we had to stop the flood and I had to see if there was a gas leak because I did not know.

So we called this plumber. This guy said, yeah, I'll be right over. And then he called and he said, I'm outside and then he was actually at the wrong address and then he just put in the right address and then came over. So it was after midnight by this time and he came and he turned off the pump and he, well, the gas, there wasn't a gas leak, but he turned off the gas anyway and he did not charge us. He did not charge us because he had a new business and instead he said, can both of you leave me a review on Yelp and we said, absolutely 100%.

So we were safe for that night. So we had heat and we had running water. We had running cold water. So it could have been worse, but I have tenants. So I had to explain to them that there's not going to be any hot water and I'm doing everything I can to get it fixed, but you know, not tonight at 1 o'clock in the morning.

Now, I just want to pause here and say that these two things, the furnace, the boiler, they were different ages. This is not a case of all these things reaching the end of their lifespan because I bought them all at the same time. No, they were replaced at different times. They had different lengths on their warranties. This was truly just an attack of the machines.

So the next day, I'm just going to call them the most useless plumbers in the world came to fix the fix I'm making air quotes right now to fix the water here. They did absolutely nothing and they tried to charge me and I did not pay them because they had done nothing. I'm not going to tell the whole story about how they did nothing because that will be boring and you will turn off this podcast episode. So needless to say, at the end of the next day, we still had no hot water. I was able to contact our local handyman, God bless him.

God bless Sammy the handyman and Vincent the neighbor who really came to my rescue. Oh, and that plumber who came in the middle of the night. God bless them all. So this handyman, we worked out a plan, but it was going to take three days before he could fix the water heater. Giving me a little time to relax between the attack of the machines or to begin relaxing because the attack of the machines was not over.

I was hoping it was over, but it was not. So I began to ponder what is the universe trying to tell me. So since it was three days later, we decided because we're normal people, we don't know. We decided to run the dishwasher thinking that it would fill up with the cold water that was readily available in the house. But however, the dishwasher, when you clicked the on button, it drained and then it called for hot water and then it called for hot water again and again and again and upon getting no hot water because the hot water was turned off, it began this loud rhythmic pounding in the wall that you could hear through the entire house.

And it wouldn't stop. We tried everything. We tried unplugging the dishwasher and apparently something had been set off and the loud rhythmic pounding just kept going. And finally, after trying 100 different things, the only thing that would make it stop was to run the cold water in the basement for some reason, the dishwasher's upstairs. But to run the cold water in the basement at full blast for eight hours, that's the only thing that would stop it.

So we had to run it for eight hours so that I could get some sleep and I don't even want to look at my water bill this month. So two days later, the handyman came, he installed the new water heater, the water heater worked. I felt a little bit of relief. I thought maybe the attack of the machines is over. Now I will say that the dishwasher has not recovered, but the loud banging was permanently stopped by the running the cold water.

So we've been doing dishes by hand, but that is nothing. I don't care. I'll do the dishes by hand. But we had hot water and it started to warm up outside. And as it warmed up outside, I was walking up the block in the evening, enjoying the warmer temperatures and having to side step a few puddles because all the snow was melting.

And as I walked up this block that had been a winter wonderland, maybe a week and a half before, I looked down and there in the middle of the sidewalk was my glasses lens. This made me probably more happy than the water heater being installed. I don't know. The level of joy was equal. I couldn't believe it.

I picked up that lens and I ran home and I put it back into that empty frame in my nice red glasses and it was not scratched. Then the next day, wearing my favorite glasses again that fit me and don't fall off when I looked down, I was looking down at my phone and I realized that the problems with my phone had stopped. My phone was acting like a regular new phone and I kind of knew how to work it now. So I had heat. I had hot water.

I had my glasses back, which was truly a miracle and my phone was working. So I'm cautiously optimistic that the attack of the machines seems, I'm knocking on wood to have subsided. Now I know that those can be famous last words, but I pray and trust that it has subsided for now and that I have some time before the next attack of the machines because there's always another attack of the machines but you usually get some time between them. But one thing I know is that I will handle it next time and I want to say that this is the first time in my adult life having gone through many of the attacks of the machines. This is the first time that I was really able to handle it.

Now there was definitely some panicking, definitely some panicking but I did not fall apart and I got all these things fixed. So why? Why? Why this time? Why this attack of the machines?

I've had some time now because it's been a whole week since anything has gone wrong and I'm knocking on wood again. So as I said in the beginning of this podcast episode, the attack of the machine comes when I need to make changes. It comes in the form of a wake up call. Like, it's time to get a new job, time to get a divorce, time to get your financial act together. And this time, this particular attack of the machines, you know, I'm older.

I'm way more of a grown-up than I used to be. My daughter might not think so because of how much I freaked out when the hot water heater broke, but I am definitely way more of a grown-up than I used to be. I am in a stable relationship. I am not dealing with the ups and downs I used to deal with. I have an almost empty nest.

All of my children are self-supporting and efficient grown women. And I'm looking at my career and what are the next steps for my career or what are not the next steps for my career. I don't really know. So I'm thinking that I was not picking up on subtle hints from the universe about what my next step should be and where I am now. I was not picking up on it.

I have been kind of plowing away at how I used to do things and it's time for a change. So I think that the universe created an attack of the machines to give me a kick in a pants wig up call to call my attention to that it's time for me to make a change. Thank you for listening to today's episode of My True Ghost Stories. If you enjoy my storytelling style, you can subscribe to the Patreon where I tell interesting stories from my life in New York City and beyond. And if you have enjoyed this episode of My True Ghost Stories, please take a second to subscribe, review and share it with a friend to help this show grow.

And that's all for today. Thank you for listening to today's episode. And if you think your house is haunted, want energy cleared from your space or need a custom spiritual ritual, I'm here to help. Visit JPClearing.com or email me at JPClearing60 at gmail.com. Don't forget to join me here every Tuesday for a new episode. Until next time.