vituperation

August 14, 2002

A new shirt for me to work out in,
nice and bright so I can be seen from a distance.

I stared down at the big ball of toilet paper blocking the toilet’s exit hole, somewhat bemused. I’d come into the bathroom to pee, as is my habit, and found this blockage waiting for me like a gift, a gift from a special friend. I walked out of the bathroom.

“Oh, Teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeexxie,” I called down the hall in a singsong voice. Tex is a co-worker, name protected to protect the innocent. Or paranoid. Or litigious. Or whatever.

“Oh, Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeddy,” he called back from his office.

“Can you come out here a minute?” I aked, still in the all-too-innocent-sounding high voice.

He sauntered out of his office and toward me. I knew the toilet paper was his, because he’d passed my office a few minutes before, warning everyone within earshot that it was in their best interest not to go in the bathroom as he’d just delivered a load of diarrhea that was particularly fragrant.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Come on down here, I need you to see something,” I said, turning and walking toward the bathroom.

Tex grinned broadly, his face showing both pride and aw-shucks guilt. Like an egg-suck dog, some might say. I waited until he got to the bathroom door, then pointed at the ball of toilet paper in the bottom of the bowl. Lazy tendrils of paper drifted aimlessly in the water.

Tex laughed loudly.

“Can you fix that, please?” I asked, “I need to pee.”

Reaching out with one hand, Tex flushed the toilet. The water started to rise, as did the toilet paper. It began to spin slowly like a miniature tornado. What it didn’t do was go on down the hole.

The water reached the bottom of the lip around the top of the bowl, and continued rising slowly. We have many problems with the toilets in our office, caused chiefly - according to the landlords - by the fargin’ bastidges in the office next to us, who insistently flush tampons and whatnot down their toilets. Since all the plumbing in the building is connected, when they suffer, we all suffer.

The ball of toilet paper broke free of the bowl hole’s tenuous grasp and floated freely. The water level didn’t drop at all. Instead, it stabilized about three-quarters of an inch before the overflow level.

Tex sighed. I grinned.

There are two plungers in this bathroom. One is a cheap and crappy one, the kind you can buy at the flea market for a dollar. I know because I saw them at the flea market for a dollar, right next to the umbrella-hat I bought. The other is called a “Power Blaster”, and is the result of a trip my office manager made to Wal-Mart to get a “good plunger”, sent there by me after a bad experience with the cheap plunger.

By “good plunger” I meant “plunger with a rounded bulb that fits into the hole in the toilet for maximum plunging pressure.” What I got was the “Power Blaster”, an eight-dollar piece of crap (appropriate for the bathroom, I suppose) that’s like a big syringe with a plunger on the end. The idea is this: you pull the syringe part up, filling a chamber with air, then push the plunger down to the hole and plunge the syringe part down, expelling the air into the toilet hole and thus freeing any lodged debris.

Sounds nice in principle, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way at all, and I’ve never had any really stunning successes with it. According to my office manager, that’s the only plunger Wal-Mart carries, aside from the uber cheap ones.

Tex reached for the Power Blaster and picked it up. Still laughing, he gave the syringe handle a solid tug up, to load the thing with air. When he did, a stream of not-quite-clear water jetted out of the top of the Power Blaster, obviously left there from the last time the thing was used. The water sprayed up Tex’s front, reaching almost to his face.

There’s a scene in Home Alone, where Daniel Stern is chasing Macauley Culkin down the upstairs hallway and he trips over a wire. He manages to grab Macauley’s cuff as Macauley is trying to escape him up the attic stairs. Macauley spots his pet tarantula crawling on one of the attic steps, picks it up, and sets it on Daniel Stern’s face. What follows is perhaps the best scream by a man ever caught on film.

I’m pleased to tell you that Tex did a more than passable imitation of Daniel Stern’s shriek when the water sprayed him, and accompanied it with a lovely rendition of something akin to the Electric Slide.

Had I been able to stop laughing, I’d have most likely felt sorry for him. Most likely.

I’d also share yesterday’s further adventures with the toilet at work, wherein I myself ended up dancing and screaming around the bathroom with my pants and underwear puddled around my feet and befouled toilet water dripping from my testicles all because I was trying to show a little courtesy but really, it isn’t nearly as funny when it happens to me.