Stuff we Broke

broken bench
Some things didn’t need our help. This park swing in India looked to have been broken and repaired a few times.

Okay people, it’s confession time here.  We travelled around the world, stayed in nearly 40 different accommodations and along the way, we broke some stuff.  Some of it was fixable, some was simply destroyed. Not proud of this list, but this is real life.

Various dishes

I used to think I was reasonably capable when it came to washing dishes.  You fill the sink with soapy water, swish a cloth around the dish & presto, it comes out clean.  Give it a quick rinse and you’re done. Well for some reason, this year I broke a cup, plate, bowl or something like that at least once a month.  That’s a really bad track record. When we finally get home, I’m going back to using the dishwasher – it’s better than I am.

A Bathroom Scale.

No we didn’t eat too many french pastries or thai curry, I just did something moronic.  In one of the apartments we rented, the washing machine was in the bathroom. One day I decided it was worth giving the bathroom floor a good mop so I picked up the scale and set it on top of the washing machine while cleaning.  I promptly forgot about it. Later that day, we started a load of laundry, during dinner time, the spin cycle started which promptly shook the bathroom scale off the machine. At this point I should add the detail that the scale was one of those fancy glass ones.  It should come as no surprise to any reasonable person that when a large piece of glass falls three feet onto a tile floor it will break. What came as a bit of a surprise was not that it broke but that it did so in a manner that scared us from another room. It sounded as though someone had taken their grandma’s china and thrown it at a concrete wall.  The carnage was unbelievable. There were approximately a billion shards of glass. The largest piece I found was about 1 cm long. I had to sweep, vacuum and mop the floor again (twice) to get all of the glass, it was a bad day.

A hair dryer

In North America we have 110V power supplies.  In the rest of the world, they use 220V – it’s strong.  We knew about this, we’ve travelled before. Never bring your own high current draw devices – just use what’s there. We did exactly this, we didn’t want any problems.  On occasion, Darla likes to dry her hair and since a lot of accommodations supply a locally compatible hair dryer, it worked out. However, on this occasion there was something wrong with the hair dryer.  We’re still not sure if the intake was blocked with dust, or if something inside it shorted out but half way through drying her hair, flames shot out the back end of the thing and noises akin to small explosions started happening with increasing frequency.  We decided it best to unplug that hair dryer and move it outside to the concrete balcony just in case the fire flared up again. Darla didn’t dry her hair again on the trip.

A coffee table

I’m more than 50% convinced this thing was broken before we arrived, regardless of any pre-existing condition, it was certainly broken when we left.  In yet another apartment, we had a comfy couch (with only a mild smell of cockroaches) and a functional coffee table made of MDF. This was during one of our challenging weeks with the kids – those weeks you don’t really talk about so that you can convince yourself that you are as good as everyone else who must have perfect children since they never talk about problems either.  At one point in the week, one of our wonderful children was experiencing a state of heightened emotion whereupon a portion of their foot made contact with said coffee table. Moments later the coffee table was sort of laying on its side with several chunks of MDF and two deep threaded wood screws on the floor beside it. We reattached the leg to the table, on doing so it was apparent that this was not the first location the leg had been reattached, so we got over it quickly.

A Bed

Yup, we broke a bed.  And before you get all cheeky with your comments on claiming this is any way related to marital bliss, let me clarify: my children broke a bed.  This was one moment on our trip where I came close to packing it in and heading home. Luxury accommodation on our trip was any place that had a separate room for the kids with two single beds, and a door.  This was one of those magical places. Sometimes the kids would play in their room in the evenings. Sometimes they would build forts or play other games and, well the details here don’t really matter. One of our kids decided to play “Floor is lava”  and promptly jumped from one bed to the other. Their landing was broken (literally) by the bed. On hearing the thunderous crash, I entered the room only to find that a child and half of the mattress had gone straight through the bed frame and came to a rest on the floor.  Did I mention I had seen the kids jump like this before and explained in detail how the bed would break if they did that? Well that happened and the warnings went ignored. At this point, the kids were instructed to leave the room and quietly close the door behind them to give daddy a bit of alone time – it was in everyone’s best interest.  Fortunately, the wooden slats that supported the bed were not actually damaged. The bed was constructed like leaf-springs that simply bent far enough they passed through the gap they were meant to span. I fixed the bed. For the rest of the trip, anytime the kids did anything remotely like jumping on furniture all I had to say was “Remember Annecy” and they would immediately stop.  At least they learned from that one.

Other than those few things, we did pretty well. There is definitely some broken stuff in this world because of us, but hopefully our injections into the global economy offset those losses.