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Our toilet wouldn't stop running. It was like some mad racer who, after crossing the finish line, continued to run, leaving all the others behind as they sweated, gasped for air, and worked off the leg cramps. Like the proverbial Timex, the Energizer Bunny, and some of the blabbermouths I've known, it would not stop. I asked it to. I asked nicely. But it refused to see the logic of my arguments. "Aren't you tired, Mr. Toilet?" I asked. "Aren't you exhausted from running and running and running? Give yourself a break. Relax. Chill. Or, if you'd like, just knock it the hell off!" The toilet stopped making noise for a second as if considering these words, and then the slow hissing and bubbling of water started right up again.
What to do? I looked my problem up on the Internet and found this helpful advice, "Do not talk to your toilet or take it to counseling. Although your toilet does need professional help, a certified psychotherapist will do you little good. Instead you should call a professional of a different nature - a professional who charges just as much as someone with a Ph.D., but who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty. These people are called 'plumbers.' " I had heard of plumbers before, but I was too proud to use them. No, I would fix the problem myself. (Could this be anything but the foreshadowing of doom.) In order to fix the toilet, I had to turn the water off first. The problem is, the water at our house doesn't turn off. The main valve that leads to the house can be turned, but it only slows the water. It never completely brings it to a halt. It's like a bad crossing guard that can't keep people from crossing the street or a goalie who can't stop the ball. It's like a columnist who can't prevent himself from making a stream of analogies. I tried to turn the water off at the street and discovered that I didn't have the right tools to do it. At this point in the story, those of you poor demented souls who are familiar with plumbing will ask the question, "Why didn't you just turn the water off at the angle valve adjacent to the toilet?" Well, Mr. Smarty Pants, I didn't do this because some idiot had installed a straight valve instead of an angle valve, and I wanted to fix that too. Especially because, if a real plumber ever did come to our house, he would figure out that it was I who installed the straight valve. Unable to turn the water off elsewhere, I gave up replacing the valve and decided just to fix the toilet itself. Opening up the tank revealed that an oil spill, or some other environmental catastrophe, had taken place in the back of our toilet. The old black rubber parts in the tank were so old that they had started to fall apart, decompose, and do all the sorts of things that dead things do. It was, what the professionals call, "yucky." Cleaning that up, I thought, would be a job for the wife. But before that could happen, I had to remove the tank. With my head stuck between the bathtub and the side of the toilet bowl, I ask my wife if she could hand me the vomit wrench. You might think that I intended to say "crescent wrench," but "vomit wrench" is truly what I meant. The reason it's called this is because all my tools were at one time stored in a toolbox that my father gave me. My father, for the entirety of my life, never gave me a single thing that was brand new, even though, reportedly, he could afford to. He always gave me old, secondhand, cheap crap. The toolbox was one of these items, and before he gave it to me, he kept it in a leaky old shed, and the toolbox rusted. Being the handyman that I am, the toolbox sat untouched in my closet for several years. When I opened it up, it smelled - no exaggeration here - as if someone had upchucked into it and sealed it shut. The tools that were in it still retain the stench. As a result, when I asked for the "vomit" wrench, my wife knew exactly which one I was talking about. The wrench didn't work. The nuts and bolts that held the tank in place were so badly corroded that they wouldn't let go. They were like starfish super-glued to a rock in a tide pool. They had the death grip of a clingy lover who won't give you any space and makes you so intensely claustrophobic that you think you might just go mad. They were on there good. What I needed was a socket wrench (which is vastly different from the dirty sock wrench my father gave me). This was the perfect excuse to run out and go shopping, possibly for tools. We headed to Kmart. There were so many interesting things there, like DVDs and PlayStation games, that we got completely distracted from our task. We might have picked up a socket wrench, but I don't even remember. All I know is, we never fixed the toilet. Now, whenever we pass by the bathroom, we routinely walk in and jiggle the handle. It's like we're shaking hands with it. "Hello Mr. Toilet. How are you today?" "I'm just fine," it will gurgle. "Now leave me alone." And that, my friends, is where our story ends without ending. It goes on and on and on, like an impudent and unrestrained toilet, which is like a whole bunch of other things. |
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