Toilet Humor

Ahhh...modern plumbing. Did you know that more than any other invention, modern plumbing is credited as being the main reason why people in industrialized nations are living longer? Yes, even more than advances in medicine and being able to keep and store food. It's because having things like fresh running water and, um, waste disposal keeps disease from spreading. If you look up the Black Plague you find that most scholars essentially blame it on people dumping their chamberpots into the streets and/or people all drinking from the same well. By some accounts the plague lasted up to 7 years and killed 30-45% of the British population between 1348-50!

And the crazy thing is how relatively "new" some of plumbing is. My mom can remember when they had their first indoor toilet installed. Now, granted, they lived on a farm, but still. Can you imagine having to use an outhouse at 3:00 A.M. in the middle of January when it's Minus 75 Degrees with wind chill? Fuhgedaboudit.

So, needless to say, I think that we all take plumbing for granted. I mean, I never stop to really think about how great it is. If the brown goes down, I'm happy, know what I'm saying? So, last Monday I was over at my folks sorting through comics from both mine and Cal's old collections. I somehow ended up with almost all of his comics after he joined the cult back in '97 and have never really gone through them. Now that Megan and I have our own house, it's time to figure out what to keep and what to try and unload. After a couple of hours I called it a night, loaded up a box full of Punisher comics and headed home.

I got home at about 8:30 and as I was letting the dogs out, I thought that I heard running water. The house is still a little new to me and I'm not quite used to all of it's sounds yet. Sometimes, for example, I think that I hear running water, but it's the A/C or furnace or something. Anyhow, I'm outside with the dogs for a little bit, and when I come back in, I still hear it and this time I'm sure it's running water. So, I go downstairs and it gets a little louder. It's not the washing machine, so I venture down the hall toward the bathroom and, sure enough, I hear water running from behind the closed door. Now, at this point I'm really confused, because it sounds like our shower and I'm thinking to myself that Megan's teaching class and she hates the downstairs shower anyway. So, I knock on the door and say "Megan? Hello? Anyone in there?" Silence. I turn the knob and slowly open the door, hoping that there's not some acquaintance that needed to use our shower naked in there. The good news was there was no one in the shower, the bad news was there was a wall of water pouring out from behind the toilet.

I don't know how long I stood there, trying to discern where exactly the water was coming from and what exactly I should do about it. Thankfully we have a drain in the floor in the bathroom, so the room was draining fairly well, but there was still enough standing water that I didn't really want to slog through. And I still couldn't tell if the water was coming from a burst pipe or what. Finally, a voice in my head suggests "Hey, idiot, why don't you turn off the water to the house?" So, I sprint around the corner and do just that. The water stops and I relax a little. I mean it was a lot of water. So much so, that I started hoping whatever happened had just happened, because if it had been running like that all day, our water bill was going to come with a complimentary jar of Vasoline.

I venture back around the corner to the bathroom and tiptoe through the standing water towards the toilet. I take the lid off the tank and discover that there is no water in it. I still don't know exactly what happened, but something in the back of the toilet had somehow disconnected and... well, like I said, I don't know what happened. All I know is that there is now water all over the place. So, I start fiddling around with the mechanisms in the tank when the phone rings. It's Megan. I answer and immediately Megan can sense something is wrong. I start to tell her about what happened as I walk over and turn the flow of water to the house back on. Not, full blast mind you, just a little bit so I can see exactly where the water is coming from. I peek back into the bathroom and a geyser from the back of the toilet is now shooting up to the ceiling. I scream like a girl. Megan shouts "I'm on my way home." Nothing like having your wife tell you that she's coming home to rescue you, to stroke the male ego, let me tell you.

Needless to say, I sprinted back to the water valve and turned it off again. I went back into the bathroom and turned off the water to the toilet this time. Crossing my fingers, I turned the water to the house back on and, sure enough, no geysers or pouring water. I threw down some towels and closed the door. Good enough.

So for now, we have no working toilet downstairs. I'm still debating on whether or not to get a kit to try and fix whatever went wrong in the tank myself, or to just call a plumber. All I know is plumbers are expensive, and rightly so, what with saving us from the plague and all. But still, $70 for an estimate? Maybe an outhouse isn't such a bad idea after all...