Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Taking the Plunge

That phrase often brings up thoughts of doing something new and exciting, but not so much the way I heard it this morning from the vicinity of my bathroom: "Mommy, somebody's toothbrush took the plunge!" Now, being a bathroom, there really is only one location that one would describe a toothbrush "plunging" into. And I'll give you 3 guesses whose toothbrush it was....

Here at Chez Necessity, we suffer from a shortage of space. I have, therefore, placed a little shelf on the back of the toilet to hold toothpaste, toothbrushes (for some inane reason, 3 out of the 4 toothbrushes in this house have a bulbous base which will not fit into the toothbrush holder mounted on the wall), shaving cream, and the like. While this storage solution works, it allows for the unfortunate possibility of something falling into the toilet.

The Professor (and unfortunately me) found this out one evening in rather a dramatic way. I was awakened from a sound sleep by my husband whispering lovingly in my ear, "I just accidentally flushed one of the kids' toothbrushes down the toilet." If such a sentence has never been whispered to you in the middle of the night, let me assure you that it will wake you up right quick. Hoping against hope, I stuck my hand in the toilet to see if it was there. It was not. All the while, the question that is buzzing around my head is how it would be possible for someone to flip a toothbrush into the toilet while simultaneously flushing said toilet, but apparently this is possible.

I'm not a terribly handy gal, and The Professor, while very clever and witty, is less handy than me. Not knowing if there would be dire consequences if one flushed the toilet while a toothbrush was wedged inside (and absolutely not wanting to clean up a flood at 1:00 in the morning) I decided to go visit my ever available and helpful friend Google.

I must tell you, it's quite astounding to read about the various objects that people have flushed down their toilets, but the only useful information I gained was that if it was indeed stuck, the only way to get it out would be to remove the toilet. At this point, I decided to wait until morning to find out if we were indeed in such a bind. I wasn't worried about my children accidentally flushing in the night, as they don't seem to know what actually makes our toilet flush (leading to the oft asked question, "Whose poo is this?") and I crawled back to bed.

The next morning I held my breath, pushed down the handle, and.....it flushed. Wow. I guess a child-sized toothbrush is just short enough to get around that curve in the toilet. It was one of those toothbrushes that blinks while the kid is brushing so that they know when to stop.

I still wonder if somewhere in the vast pipe system of Westchester there is a little red toothbrush blinking on and off, waiting to be rescued.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It was a pretty impressive bit of sewer luge, if you think about it.

I don't think I'm getting enough credit for putting the exact right amount of English on that child's toothbrush to help it handle the tight curves of our building's plumbing system.

Bezzie said...

Hee hee!!! I learned the hard way NOT to google about things in various plumbing orfices. Ick.

One of the six of us kids was dubbed "The Phantom Pooper" by my father growing up...to this day the Phantom Pooper is a mystery!

grmybmy said...

I gotta say, five kids and we never had much in the way of misflushed items--at least that I ever knew about. There was one time though, when "PTG" did overflow the toilet, and as it ran toward the hot air vent that is on the floor of the bathroom, he tried to put a towel over the vent to catch the water--not Dad's favorite day...GB