One of my daughter’s teachers looked at the parents sitting in front of him at B-CC’s Back-to-School Night last week, smiled, and said, “I moved here from Texas about three weeks ago. So far I’ve experienced 1.) an earthquake, 2). a hurricane and 3). whatever this is,” and he jerked his thumb toward the windows that were being pelted with rain.

We all laughed, looked out at the dark and stormy night and got momentarily distracted watching a cruise ship sail down East-West Highway. At least, it looked like a cruise ship. I suppose it might have been a hydroplaning Suburban.

The last few weeks have brought some, ahem, unusual natural “events” to the area, that’s for sure.

As a result, we’ve all learned a thing or two about ourselves, and perhaps our families, in the past few weeks.

Maybe you learned that you’re not supposed to run outside the house during an earthquake. (I guess we’ll remember that one for the next time?)

Maybe you learned that you CAN actually hate Pepco even more than you thought you did. (That was certainly the case for most of us in my neck of Chevy Chase, where the power went out three times in three weeks.)

Or perhaps, you, like me, learned that your children have a startling familiarity with...the sump pump.

I mean, when I discovered that I was pregnant with twins, I envisioned lots of wacky adventures. What I never pictured was that the day would come when one of my children would call home in the middle of a school day to inquire whether the sump pump was holding up.

I was on my way out the door in the middle of yet another torrential thunder and rainstorm when our phone rang. When I saw from the caller ID that it was the elementary school, I immediately thought that they must have lost power. I considered not answering for only a second, I swear.

Taking deep, calming breaths, I picked up the phone.

"Hi, Mommy?" said a cherubic little voice.

"Yes?" I answered, surprised that it wasn't a robo-call telling me that the children were on their way. It seemed a little late in the day for my son to be calling because he'd forgotten something, and a little early for him to be calling to ask for permission for a playdate.

"Is the basement flooded?" This was in a half whisper.

Uh, what?

My mind reeled. Clearly, we must need to ratchet the stress level down at home, given that my children were now experiencing home maintenance anxieties.

“No, I don’t think so,” I responded.

“Oh, good,” he breathed in relief. And then: “I was kind of worried because I unplugged the sump pump yesterday.”

I may have lost consciousness for a minute or two.

When the kitchen spun back into place, I managed to squeak, “You WHAT?!”

“It was making a noise, so I unplugged it. I thought I’d better tell you. Hey, can you move my X-Box up off the floor just in case?”

I ran downstairs, carrying the phone. (I did mention that this was during a torrential rainstorm, didn't I?) I have no idea how to plug the sump pump back in, so I told him that he had to stay on the phone and walk me through it.

At first I couldn’t raise the lid on the sump pump pit (“oh, you need a butter knife,” said the 11-year-old expert on the line) and then I leaned into pit, considering the wires.

I wondered briefly if I was about to electrocute myself.

On the other end of the line, my son explained patiently which plug went where while all around him children got on with, oh, I don’t know, long division perhaps?

I figured it out, managed to stay alive, and admonished my son to leave the sump pump alone in the future.

(Later, I emailed his teacher to thank her for letting him call me. She said she’d at first told him that his parents could take care of the basement, so to try not to worry, but then she noticed the look in his eyes—he hadn’t confessed exactly why he was so sure the basement was at risk—and decided to let him go ahead. Whether or not he would have called if the survival of the X-Box were not at stake is a question that I’d rather not think about too deeply.)

In the end, even a correctly plugged-in sump pump couldn't stop the inevitable. A couple of days (and a monsoon's worth of rain) later, the power went out as I was on my way out the door to the aforementioned Back-to-School night, and my daughter began texting me updates about the increasing sogginess of the basement carpet while I was making the rounds of her classes.

I finally had to tell her to stop, because I couldn't really pay attention to her teachers. Besides, I was kind of enjoying hanging around the halls, ignoring the deluge, and living in denial.

Finally, I received a text from my husband, who hadn't been able to attend Back-to-School Night because he was working late.

"The basement didn't make it." 

When I got home, the power was still out, and the two younger kids were asleep on the couch, surrounded by about 500 stuffed animals; my oldest was finishing up some homework by flashlight; and my husband was standing in the dark by the basement stairs, hands on hips, a defeated look on his face.

 “The battery backup on the sump pump failed,” my fifth-grade daughter, suddenly awake, chirped pleasantly from underneath several Ugly Dolls and Sock Monkeys.

Fabulous.

Of course, it could have been a lot worse—we just wound up with a soaked carpet, not the "thriving coral reef" that Dave Barry once described happening in his own house.

We'll have to replace it, and—this is the bigger headache—no one can head down there to play until it's all cleaned up. Meanwhile, the kids have clearly learned some valuable lessons, not least of which is the critical role of the sump pump in household happiness.