A Joke About a Cold Night and How Many Dogs You Own

On the other side of town lives my Aunt Julie. She's a wonderfully nice woman; an elementary school teacher, a professional story teller, and the owner of two young malamutes. A woman of much wisdom and compassion.

A few weeks back my Aunt Julie's furnace abruptly broke late Friday night. Had this been summer time there wouldn't have been a problem but we were in the middle of winter during a particularly cold spell where the temperature had dropped to five below before the wind chill. She woke up Saturday morning, stepped out of her bed and as soon as her feet hit the wood floor a cold shot run through her body. When she found the thermostat in the house she saw that it was only forty degrees in her usually warm home. Right away she knew there could only be one thing wrong.

Despite being Saturday, she knew she needed to get a new furnace regardless of whether or not the stores were open; Forty degrees was simply too cold to just wait until Monday. So she called up one of the local heating companies and, after explaining her situation and agreeing to pay double overtime, managed to get a technician out to her house.

After looking the machine over, the prognosis the repairman gave was pretty grim. The furnace was at least twenty years old and replacing the obsolete parts would cost more then simply getting a new furnace. After deciding that the repairman was telling the truth, Julie knew the only sensible action would be to replace the furnace. I mean, a fireplace and a stove just aren't sufficient to heat a modern house for any real length of time.

By the end of the day the heating company had managed to install a brand new, state of the art furnace and at a reasonable cost. By the time Julie woke up on Sunday the house was back up to a pleasant seventy degrees.

I get together with Julie a few days later and she recounted the whole story to me. With the weather outside still a brisk three below and little snow flakes falling from the sky it wasn't hard to visualize the extreme conditions.

By the time she had finished her story, her two dogs had come in from outside and where quite excited to see all the people who had come to visit them. As I petted one of the dogs and watched his tail wag I couldn't help but make my response.

"Wow Julie, it's a good thing they managed to install your new furnace so quickly on such short notice. That was a three dog night and you only have two!"