I have hot-water

—“How do I compress a 20-minute orgy of techno-jargon into something that won’t zone you out?”
I’d say that to my lifeguard friend at Canandaigua’s YMCA swimming-pool.
“At long last I can shower at home,” I’d say. “My hot water is back.”
She’d want explanation.
I always tell that lifeguard she was Step-Three away from my difficult childhood.
-Step-One was my college, Houghton, the first religious institution that didn’t automatically declare me “disgusting” and “Of-the-Devil” = a threat. —Professors wanted me in their class.
-Step-Two was my wife of 44&1/2 years, the first female who liked who I already was.
-Step-Three was that lifeguard. She said hello to me by name in passing. She was just being sociable, but I was dumbfounded.
“NO PRETTY LADY WILL TALK TO YOU!” Yet there was that lifeguard, stately and statuesque, a “looker.”
“You talkin’ a-me?” reprising Robert De Niro in Taxi-Driver.
Unaccustomed to dealing with women, I “fell for her,” for lack of a better term.
I’ll never do THAT again.
Thankfully that lifeguard and I got past that, probably because I never had her phone-number. I don’t even know her last name.
I (it’s no longer “we”) have a “tankless” water-heater. That means it heats water on-the-fly. There isn’t a standing tank of hot water continually being heated.
Water is heated on demand. Open a hot-water tap, and water runs through my tankless. It’s heated as it passes through.
As originally designed, our house had a tankless water-heater. But it was Swedish = hard to get parts. (I had to repair it after 2-3 years. Its heater-core corroded.)
It also used a pilot-light instead of electronic ignition. This was 30 years ago. Since the tankless mounted to an outside wall, the pilot liked to blow out in windstorms.
It did so after my stroke 26 years ago. I had to relight the pilot despite being stroke-addled.
A heating-contractor told us our system was illegal, so we installed a 40-gallon tank-type water-heater. Another tank-type was installed when the first gave up.
Then our gas supplier offered a rebate to go tankless, so we had one installed maybe 10-12 years ago.
It’s been supplying hot water ever since, but became undependable maybe five years ago.
Ask a heavy load of it, like my washing-machine, and it would overheat and cut out. It was the heater-core. I’d go down into the basement and reset it.
It only tripped under heavy demand = the washer. Lighter demand, a shower or my dishwasher, didn’t overheat it.
A few weeks ago it tripped during my shower. All-of-a-sudden a cold shower. I had to shower at Canandaigua’s YMCA.
3-5 visits by my installer, all covered by a maintenance-contract. Cleaned twice, and heater-core flushed at least twice; but still it tripped.
Last visit my maintenance-man was at wit’s end. It still tripped. He called the manufacturer tech-support, and they suggested a new “inducer-fan.”
That fan blows through the flame, and also the heater-core.
That fixed it. So how do I compress all this techno-gibberish into a story that won’t bore my lifeguard friend?
We word-guys have a habit of saying too much.
Getting her laughing — and I love seeing her laugh — won’t be easy.
Maybe I’ll just say “hot water at last!”

• For 2-3 years or more I did aquatic balance-training in the Canandaigua YMCA’s swimming-pool. I dropped out for the moment so I could try dry-land balance-training at a hospital Physical-Therapy. I continue to use the pool on-my-own, but felt like I was wasting time with the aquatic balance-training class.
• My beloved wife died of cancer April 17th, 2012.
• I had a stroke October 26th, 1993 from an undiagnosed heart-defect since repaired. I pretty much recovered. Just tiny detriments; I can pass for never having had a stroke.
• My (“our”) house was built in 1989. It’s super-insulated, and my wife and I designed it.