Just when you thought it was safe to get back on the toilet…
The toilet is responsible for a lot of grief in my life. Mainly from kids who are potty training. Neither of my kids took too kindly to the whole number 2 in the potty thing. My son just didn’t care. My daughter has had issues on and off with number 2, she has to take medicine every day just so she can go easily. Too much information? I won’t even get into me, other than I can assure you I eat a lot of fiber. Oh yes, and don’t forget that my children are frequent “pee-ers”, which means that if you mention the word toilet, pee, poop, potty, underwear, bottom, butt, Justin Bieber, then they have to go. The Professor is so programmed to go before he does certain things that he HAS to go before eating, even if he went five minutes before that.
I have dropped many, many things in the toilet. I think there is some sort of tractor beam that pulls things in. No wonder my kids have a fear of those automatic toilets! I’ve dropped mainly phones in there, but also my glasses have fallen off of my face right into the water, I’ve lost hair things in the water off of my head, and so forth. Many years ago when we lived in the trailer park, a clear deoderant lid somehow fell into and plugged up our toilet. My darling husband had to take the toilet apart to discover what was making it stuck up. I can honestly say that the one thing that my kids have NOT done is delight in flushing things down the toilet, knock on wood (and I’m only doing that because, well, it’s never too late for my kids to decide to start doing stuff.)
The Death Star’s tractor beam has nothing on the one in the toilet.
Today was one of THOSE days. I’m behind on laundry, and dishes because we had company and then a trip on Sunday. Yesterday I was NOT feeling well (I still say I had an adverse reaction to those McDonald’s French Fries.) When Mommy doesn’t feel well, everything goes to pot. Heaven forbid anyone else do anything. Anyhoo… today I was frantic trying to at least get caught up on laundry. I was up to three baskets last time I checked and I have two loads to go. I also had to change the bag in the can thing-which is always an interesting task because the bag always falls into the can box, and it’s on our basement landing. It’s almost a spectacle to see when I try to change the bags-pop cans are flying everywhere and bouncing down the basement stairs, I’m pulling and yanking trying to get the dang thing out of there. In the midst of all this, my Mom calls me back. When I answer the phone I see that I need to leave in less than five minutes to go get my son from the bus stop, and then walk him to the library so no one steals him. So I tell her I have to go. In a tizzy I throw the bag down the stairs, tell the princess to get her shoes on, and I run on upstairs to use the bathroom. At some point I must have stuck the phone in my pocket, because when I get up, PLOP! It falls in.
I have lost more than one phone to the ravages of toilet water. I took it all apart and am letting it dry. I think it’s ok. It doesn’t indicate that it has water damage-believe me I know what tells you that! I tried to put it in a bowl of rice, but there was so much rice, um, debris that jumped on my phone I was terrified of that ruining it even more. So it’s in piece on my counter. I mean, who is going to call me, someone for an interview? HA HA HA!
This got me to thinking about some of the other things that have happened involving the toilet. The toilet at Casey’s ruined the phone before the last one. That’s not the worst thing that has happened. That happened this past winter. I was driving to work. Yeah, remember I used to do that? Anyway, the particular job I was doing at the time had a company vehicle that went along with it. I would drive pretty far sometimes. I have a problem when I travel-I pee too much. I mean, I could stop drinking so much caffeine, but why do that? So there is usually at least one bathroom stop per commute. This particular time I was on my way south, and I really had to pee. I also really had to stop and pick something up, so I thought I’d do the proverbial killing two birds with one stone. I stopped by the place I needed to go, which was right on the way to where I was going for work anyway, and ran in. I made it to the bathroom, barely. I did my business and stood up to flush. It was one of those really powerful noisy toilets. As the water goes down something falls out of my pocket and WHOOSH goes right down the hole.
I stood there in shock. Oh that seriously DID NOT happen! Those were the KEYS. And not just the keys to the SUV. You see, ADD me loses things aplenty. I am terrified of losing the important keys for work as well as my personal keys. So I would take a carabiner clip and keep everything together yet easily detachable. So down went the work SUV keys, my car keys, the key to my office, the key to my house, the post office key, etc, etc, etc…
I was feeling a bit woozy at this point. Sick to my stomach. Think, think, WHAT DO I DO? I had better go call someone. No wait, I should go tell them what happened. Surely they would have an idea. I walk out of the bathroom and find a woman stocking shelves. Only she does not see me. Or hear me. Or sense a disturbance in the force telling her that I am approaching. “Excuse me…” I start to say. She drops something glass and it goes everywhere. She’s a nice little old lady. I tell her, “I think something bad just happened.” She nodded, “Yeah I didn’t mean to break that.” Oh dear… I explain what happened in the bathroom. She just looks at me for a long long time. Then she said she’d go ask the manager what they could do.
Meanwhile, I go back outside to get my phone out of the SUV to call people-first work to let them know I won’t be arriving to teach their class. Then my husband to come get me. I go to open the door AND IT IS LOCKED. This is not happening! I’m quite a ways from home, it’s not like I can walk. So now I have to go back in, and tell the people whose plumbing system I have probably ruined that now I need to borrow their phone. They don’t have a pay phone (Who has those anymore anyway? Duh.)
Luckily there is a very nice girl working there who lets me use her cell phone. Then I had to ask for a phone book, because like everyone else I don’t memorize numbers anymore, I just keep them on my phone. I call work. They are pretty cool about it. While I’m making arrangements to get my shift covered, because noone in my neck of the woods is going to go get the extra key to help me out of course, the store is still trying to reach a plumber.
Then I call Evil Genius. I tell him to go ahead and laugh. He doesn’t, because the toilet is not helping him at our house, because Princess Poopypants has just filled her panties with poo. But he agrees to drive the 45 minutes to get me.
End result-the keys are gone. I would have to pay a plumber $200 to come in and take apart the toilet. They are probably gone anyway, he says. Noone seems to believe me about this part-it was a powerful toilet! So now I have to sit and wait in this store until my husband arrives.
Now here is the most complicated part. I had to send an email message to everyone I work with trying to find someone who could meet me in town the next morning and let me in to the building so I could get the spare SUV key, and let me borrow their key until I could get another one made. Because heaven forbid they would let us keep any extra keys for the office around! Then my husband had to drive me from the office back down to the place where I had left the SUV to unlock it and drive it back to work. And THEN he had to drive me back home. For months he would give me crap every time I went to the bathroom… can’t say that I blame him.
Needless to say, I won’t go anywhere near that store again for fear they’ll point me out and blame all their plumbing problems on me.
I’m beginning to think maybe I can just start blaming everything that comes up missing on it. It probably has all the missing socks. All of those pairs of prescription sunglasses I’ve lost, yeah they’re probably in there too. The french bread that we still wonder where it went to, I bet it’s somehow responsible.
So if you’re one of the, what, two people who actually call me, you’d better email me or Facebook me. And you can blame it the toilet.
Like this:
Like Loading...
The Sadder But Wiser Girl 