Plubming-Our fourth and hopefully final attempt at fixing the toilet

When I was a young man, growing up in the warm Sacramento valley, I developed a passion for plumbing. Note: Not everything that I write is true. While other little boys were out in the street pushing dump trucks across the hot asphalt, I would often just be sitting alone in the bathroom, looking at the slow bob of the filler as it floated to the top. It was sort of like this:

Many years passed, and I lost my obsession with the toilet. I wound up spending my days in the trees, eating fresh blackberries from the overgrown shrub that poked through the slats in our fence. (Some parts of this are true. I just can't remember which parts).

So, we arrived at our Waterloo today. (Note the humorous inclusion of both water vis a vi the overflowing, and loo, the English word for toilet. When you're having your toilet "fixed" for the fourth time you begin to lose a bit of faith in the whole plumbing business. However, we upgraded this time from Waldorf water and gas, a company who's motto is: "We probably can't fix it, but we'll show up and charge you anyway, to some old guy.

Every business has practitioners like this old plumber. He arrived promptly at seven A.M., much to my chagrin. I was hoping he would have been using the Waldorf Water and Gas system of timing. This system involves giving you a time between 1 and five P.M. then arriving at about five every time and telling you that they can't fix the toilet because all of the hardware stores are closed.

Anyhow, this salty fellow arrived in my face at the ridiculous hour of 7 A.M. already pissed. (No comment needed).

Plumber: Look at this!

M: (Nodding knowingly). That's a toilet all right.

Plumber: Do you see this!

M: (Nodding knowingly).

Plumber: The valve on your overflow tube is set above the back of the tank!

M: That's a tube all right.

Interlude

Happiest Moment by Lydia Davis

If you ask her what is a favorite story she has written, she will hesitate for a long time and then say it may be this story that she read in a book once: an English language teacher in China asked his Chinese student to say what was the happiest moment in his life. The student hesitated for a long time. At last he smiled with embarrassment and said that his wife had once gone to Beijing and eaten duck there, and she often told him about it, and he would have to say the happiest moment of his life was her trip, and the eating of the duck.

Return

So, the plumber and I eyed the toilet dutifully. We exchanged a few words about sports team from the Midwest. I wanted to ask him what it was like to watch other people do shitty work all the time. I wanted him to laugh at the joke with me. He pulled out a knife and sawed off the top of the valve.

Plumber: My buddy made fun of me for buying this little knife.
Here is a person who uses a knife all the time.
Plumber: I told him I use it all the time.

The plumber has white hair. I would describe him as briskly confident. He is confident in the sort of way that makes you think that your toilet will be fixed. And a month from now, when I am lying in bed, and I hear the faint trickle of water splashing on the floor, I'll roll over and go back to sleep. He is a liar, I'll conclude, like all plumbers. And in my dreams fish will swim in the watery space between our floors, little flecks of gold in the dark.

They'll have fish babies and live fish lives, which I imagine are short, and somewhat indiscreet. And in my dreams the fish will grow as big as white whales. They'll crack the boards that are holding this frail house together. In the morning I'll give them a talking to. I'll explain to them that fish aren't meant to live between floors. But for now, I'll sleep. And I'll flush my toilet with the hope that just this once, everything will be fixed, everything will be fine.