It had taken him three days but he was finally finished. He wiped the sweat from his brow and smiled. The neighbors around him looked on in shock. Finally, it was clear what it was. But his wife would be the most surprised when she came out to see what he had done.
He noticed the expression on her face and knew there was no going back from this.
Eric Williams loved his life. He had a beautiful wife named Mary and a 5-year-old named Stacey. But his home in Marquette, Michigan, had just one problem – it was just too cold.
Marquette was close to Lake Superior, one of the great lakes. That meant that it got extremely cold in the winter and fall. But he wouldn’t just sit around and accept the freezing weather like his neighbors, he would do something.
Eric’s old army injuries meant that he had a metal plate in his leg. In cold weather, the plates would make it painful to walk. What made matters even worse was that his wife would get sick in the weather with her immune system not being the best.
So to take care of himself and his wife he had to think of something ingenious to solve the problem. But he didn’t know that the neighbors would soon be laughing at him.
Eric learned a lot of skills while in the army including a bit of carpentry erecting temporary structures. He decided that he would design something that would solve the cold weather problem once and for all.
He just wasn’t unaware that his building would attract a lot of attention.
Eric spent an hour after work every day working on drafting his plan. He sat down in his study and got to work with a piece of white paper and a pen. Once he had drawn out his plan, he listed what he needed to get.
Now that the planning phase was out of the way, he had to get the supplies. But his neighbor would take notice once he returned with the supplies.
He wrote a list of what he needed for his project. He wanted to get everything and have it done before the cold front swept in. He drove to his local hardware store and picked up panes of glass, wooden beams, and gravel.
But once he got home and took them out of his truck, his nosy neighbor would pop his head over the fence to see what he was doing.
Eric put on his gloves and got to work laying the foundation for his project with one of his old friends who had volunteered to help him. But when he heard laughter from behind him he turned around to see his neighbor watching him.
“What’s your problem?” Eric asked in a confrontational voice. “You trying to build in this freezing weather, what are you doing anyway?” But Eric didn’t feel he had to answer the question. But then more of the neighborhood started to peep.
Eric knew that he had now created a spectacle as more neighbors started to hear the noise from his construction. Now he felt like a laughing stock as people just watched him struggle in the cold.
But he would show them, they would stop laughing when his solution to the weather was complete and worked.
Eric inserted the beams into the ground and laid out his window pains on the ground. It was taking shape now. But his neighbors didn’t understand what it was nor did he expect them to.
To the onlookers, he looked crazy, but he would show them what all of his efforts were for. He would get the last laugh.
The next day Eric woke up early to get to work, it was a Saturday so he had the day off. He continued throughout the day, working up a sweat in the cold weather. He was nearly done now. He couldn’t wait to show them what he was making.
He had dug out the ground, placed the wooden structures, and put them in the glass windows. It now looked like a small shack of some kind.
It had taken him three days but he was finally finished. He wiped the sweat from his brow and smiled. The neighbors around him looked on in shock. Finally, it was clear what it was. Now his wife could enjoy some warmth whenever she needed it.
But what had he built for his family to stay warm?
Jealousy ran through every bone of his neighbors’ bodies as they looked at what he had built. It was a hot tub! He had looked at countless videos to figure out how to build it. He could also use the sauna to treat his old injuries.
But what did his wife think?
Eric excitedly called his wife out to look at what he had built. She came out and couldn’t believe what he had done for her even after being married for 15 years. The neighbors watched on in silence as she hugged him.
The small structure was quite impressive for a single man to build.
Just as Eric had speculated, a cold front rolled in less than a week later and the whole time he and his wife enjoyed their hot indoor hot tub with margaritas. The window panes would steam up and give them privacy from their prying neighbors.
The hard work that went into it was well worth the labor and he was happy to do it for his wife. But what about his neighbors?
Even though they had been laughing just days earlier while they watched him labor away at a project they thought was a waste of time, now that he was enjoying the fruits of his labor they watched in envy as the cold winter wind blew through the suburb.
Eric even smiled at his neighbor the next time he went out to the hot tub. But instead of laughing, he had a scowl on his face. That’s when Eric knew he truly had the last laugh.