Finding a pair of shiny silver tweezers at the bottom of our toilet bowl should have been a huge red flag that big trouble was looming. Max, although immensely intrigued by the powers of the toilet, hasn’t the mildest interest in being potty trained. Instead, his happiness comes in the form of flushing. Unfortunately, he sweetens his experience by inserting tiny treasures beneath the lid. Some treasures are more easily flushable than others.
A few days after finding those tweezers, the toilet began to show signs of distress. It became sluggish. The plunger roosting next to it was forever dripping wet, while personal remnants hung around the toilet bowl like hyenas around a watering hole. Exasperated that Kenny’s last major fete could not be sent away, I yelled for John to take up the plunger challenge.
“My God, Kenny!” John yelled mid plunge, “have you been eating concrete, boy?!”
“No, just berries,” he replied, as he headed downstairs.
After some lively language and rigorous plunging, the toilet finally obliged and sent its meager remains to the sewer. It was becoming most obvious that it was only a matter of time before we had a replay of Mayle’s Burrito Bar debacle of five years ago. Taking John at his word, I put plan into action and vowed to call the plumber once I got into work.
The plumber arrived just a mere hour after I placed my call. And with just five minutes notice that he was en route, I rushed home from work to let him in. As he knocked on the pipes and snaked out the drain, I developed a sudden urge “to GO”.
Now while some have the ability to suppress bodily functions, I do not. John, for example, can make it through it an entire day postponing it. Of course, once he’s made it home, he’ll yell over his shoulder while bounding up the stairs, “I’ve had to poop since this morning!”
I, however, have about five minutes from thought to action. As I danced around the kitchen praying he would hurry, he made a second trip to his van in search of more equipment. As I stood frozen in the kitchen prairie dogging, I nervously called out,
“Find anything good?”
“I guess you could say that,” he replied before heading back upstairs.
My eyes darted from object to object. Max’s diaper? A bucket? The cat box? Behind the garage? I contemplated all these options as I felt the sweat form at the base of my neck.
From the scraping and scratching of metal to porcelain I heard overhead, I knew my options were markedly decreasing. Grabbing a bucket and a garbage bag, I flew down the steps and thought about how nice it would be to have a second bathroom just about where I was just then sitting.
I think Moxie agreed, because she sat at my knee wagging her tail.
As I pulled the trashcans out to the street, under the guise of kitty litter, the plumber met me in the drive.
“A few recommendations,” he began as I sheepishly looked at the can I was loosely holding in my right hand, “first, don’t use the toothbrush on the bathroom sink.”
Pausing long enough to put his tools in the van, he followed up with, “And don’t flush cleaning wipes down the toilet. They really jam it up.”
I would have explained that it wasn’t me who did it, but given the contents of the can that separated us, I decided that the less said the better.
Until Max is over this flushing phase, I think it’s wise to keep the plumber’s number on speed dial.
Also, I might want to invest in a few more Homer buckets and bags for those impromptu moments when nature calls.
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