Tag Archives: bathroom

Overflow

I was downstairs the other day when I heard this rumbling sound coming from the second floor. As I hopped up the stairs, the sound got louder, and when I made it up, there was a puddle of water growing outward from the bathroom door. I opened the door and the toilet was overflowing. I don’t know how or why it started to overflow right then and there, because I hadn’t used that toilet in a while, but this train of thought only lasted for five seconds, tops, because the more I stood around and thought about it, the more gross toilet water was making its way out of the toilet and into the rest of the house.

NGS Picture ID:1443475

My first instinct was to grab the plunger and get right to work, which, with the toilet bowl already filled to the brim with toilet water, with the water cascading down the sides of the bowl, only made things splash around. I tried to position myself standing on my tiptoes, as if I could somehow get to work here without getting wet, but as soon as I started plunging, up and down, there were these mini tidal waves making direct contact with the front of my pants.

It wasn’t working. And that’s when I thought to turn the water off at the source, something I should have done immediately. But I only let myself contemplate my missteps for another second, second and a half, because I was standing there and my shoes were getting wet. I had to bend down to reach for the knob behind the base of the toilet, and I was really afraid that some of the toilet water was going to splash on my face, which somehow it did.

Once the water was off, the sound of rushing water went away, which gave me the false sense that my problem had been solved. This feeling of comfort didn’t last very long, as I realized that I had a huge mess on my hands. My brain was looking for some sort of quick action. Or, if not an immediate fix, at least an immediate plan, something that I could get to work on right away, a series of steps that, once executed, would make my problem go away. But I didn’t know where to start. And the growing pool of water that was escaping the bathroom made its way to the edge of the staircase, so I could hear the water start to trickle down in those little lines of very rapid drops.

There was a towel hanging next to the shower, and without really thinking it out, I just grabbed it and threw it to the ground. But the water was so much that it immediately overwhelmed my puny effort. The towel soaked through, and it hadn’t made any noticeable dent in the water level. And now what was I supposed to do with the towel? I couldn’t pick it up and put it anywhere, it would just drip all over the place. If anything, I’d only added to the mess.

I thought about paper towels, but no, I had to go down to the basement and find a mop. And then I had to mop everything up with a bucket until it was all clean. It took like two hours, total. I was just sitting there, I had other things on my mind besides mopping the floors, and then all of the sudden the toilet went bonkers and totally hijacked my day.

And just as I was going over the floors with a soapy solution, I heard the same rumbling sound coming from downstairs. I went to run, like a real life game of human whack-a-mole, to turn that water off before there was another giant mess to clean up, but the floors were still slippery from me having just mopped everything up, and so I wiped out, my feet flying out forward, the back of my head hitting the lip of the top step before my entire body slid.

And I would’ve fallen the entire flight, but right as my head made contact, my left arm instinctively shot up and grabbed on to the railing. So I was stable for a second, but only a second. With the wind knocked out of me due to the hit to my head, I started panicking, concentrating all of my strength toward my left hand on the railing. It must have been too much weight for the piece of wood bolted to the wall, because something popped out, a piece of hardware, I couldn’t be sure, and when that gave way, that’s when I fell down the rest of the stairs.

My bottom tooth had punctured the inside of my lower lip, and as I opened my eyes after realizing that I wasn’t seriously injured, I felt the dual sensation of the warm blood filling my mouth as well as a coolness at the back of my head. It was a puddle. It was coming from the bathroom. I don’t know how it got to me so quick, or maybe I’d been knocked out for a little while when my body tumbled to the ground floor.

Then there was a loud popping sound, like a burst, like a mini explosion. It was the upstairs bathroom. I definitely turned the water off, but there must have been some sort of pressure behind it, because now there was a strong current of rushing water pouring out of the bathroom, down the stairs. I was getting soaked from above and below. And I tried to twist my body into an upright position, but everything hurt pretty badly, and so I let myself just kind of sit there, the water accumulating under my head, now maybe half an inch deep.

And then I heard the doorknob turn, I realized too late that I was unfortunately positioned right by the front door. I tried to scream out, “Wait!” but she must not have heard me over all of that running water, and when the door opened, it opened right to my head, another slam. Right before I blacked out again, I could hear my wife, screaming, she was just like, “Jesus Christ, Rob, what the fuck?”

Reader mail: Toilet paper

Today I’m going to respond to some reader mail. I’d do this more often, but nobody ever sends me any anything. And so when I got this email today, I wasn’t going to ignore it. No, I want to encourage stuff like this, right? So here it goes. Julie wrote me:

OK so I think you should write a blog post about toilet paper. People seem to have a very strong preference for whether the toilet paper roll should be put in so that the paper is pulled from the top or the bottom. Random, I know.

Julie, thanks again for writing. I’m really interested by your email because, up until now, I’ve never even considered what you’re talking about. It’s always just there, the toilet paper, except when it’s out, obviously, but now that you mention it, yeah, I guess the paper does dispense itself from a particular direction.

toilet paper

And now that I’m thinking about it even more, things are starting to click, like I’m thinking about all of those times growing up when my mother would get really upset with all of us every time we, “put the toilet paper on the wrong way.” I don’t know why I never made the connection before.

Yeah, and, also, every once in a while, not always, but sometimes, I’d say like half the time, my wife comes up to me and she’s like, “Rob, what’s wrong with you? Why is this so difficult?” and, you know, statistically speaking, I’m bound to get it right half the time. And half the time I’m getting scolded for doing it the wrong way, but I’m not getting it, that there’s even a difference, so I guess nothing’s being reinforced, nothing other than, well, sometimes I’m just going to get yelled at about the toilet paper.

Because, yeah, sometimes I deserve to be yelled at about the toilet paper. I’m not trying to make the argument that I’m the perfect housemate, that I’m just this guy minding his own business, keeping his side of the street clean, every once in a while getting ambushed about the direction of the toilet paper.

No, a lot of the time I totally deserve it. Like, if there’s not really any left, and I’m upstairs, I know that I should go downstairs to where we keep the big package of toilet paper, I should go down and get a new one. Since I’m down there already, I might as well get two, you know, consolidate the trips downstairs. Right?

Right. But a lot of the time, even though my intentions are good, if there was enough toilet paper to satisfy my toilet paper needs, I’ll often get distracted before or during the act of going downstairs to get more. And again, why are we keeping all of our toilet paper so far from the toilet? I know the answer to that. It’s because there’s no room to keep all of the toilet paper in the bathroom. That’s the answer.

I’m constantly trying to insert a different answer into the conversation, like, well, let’s just keep it in the bathroom anyway, even though there’s no room for it. But there’s an answer for that too, it has something to do with adults not living that way, like you can’t just keep things out, like a giant bulk thing of toilet paper that you bought at the bulk store.

And then I would argue, well, why are we shopping at the bulk store? To save trips that we’d have to make to buy more toilet paper. It’s great. And it’s a great answer, at least I think so. Those super bulk packs of toilet paper, they last my wife and me like four months. That’s four months of never having to leave the house to buy toilet paper. Everybody can get behind that.

So by that same logic, I would then say, well, why only go ninety percent of the way? I’d like to not only save trips to the store, but I’d also like to save trips downstairs. If the overall goal is to cut down on time getting up to get toilet paper, then why shouldn’t we just keep that whole big thing of fifty plus rolls of toilet paper on the bathroom floor? It’s a bathroom. I don’t think it’s totally out of the ordinary to expect to find toilet paper in the bathroom. And again, I’m not an architect, sorry I don’t have a time machine to travel back to the past to convince the architects who built this two-bedroom to maybe build a closet, maybe a tiny closet, something that could fit a big bulk object, maybe like two feet by two feet.

But why am I wasting my breath? You don’t think I’ve gone through this, and many similarly convincing arguments, hundreds of times already? I just can’t win. The end result is always the same. And it’s like, whenever I take stock of my life, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m constantly walking up and down the stairs to either go get or to come back up with a roll (or two) of toilet paper.

Julie, I hope that answers your question. I was a little reluctant to get into the whole toilet paper subject, because the way my mind works, one thing often leads to another, and I didn’t want the conversation naturally steering toward, you know, like what do we use toilet paper for? Like poop and stuff. Ugh, gross. I just mentioned it. I just mentioned it in a half-assed attempt to congratulate myself for not mentioning it. I was so close.

Keep those emails coming!

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