Daily Newsie

In scrounging for NaBloPoMo topics, I started probing my innermost thoughts, fears and neuroses, because, frankly, if I were to write about those, I’d run out of space before I ran out of words. I started thinking about my toilet fear, and decided to trace it back as far as I could remember, and suddenly it was clear as day why I’m terrified of toilets, creeped out by commodes, leery of the loo. So gather around, friends, for the day has come for you to hear the tale … of the toilet. *creepy whisper*

It was 1988. I was on the cusp of my seventh birthday, and my family was getting ready to move into a new house. Our old house was just fine, really — I don’t remember any issues with the toilets there. A clothes bar in the bathroom once fell out of the wall and its anchor screw gouged my leg, but that didn’t have anything to do with the toilet. Well, one time I dropped a roll of toilet paper into the downstairs toilet and my dad had to get a stick to fish it out, but the plumbing was, by and large, benign.

I was less-than-ambivalent about moving into the new house, which we rented from my uncle, for one reason and one reason only: The toilet didn’t work very well. (There was also a nest of fire ants in my closet, but I didn’t know that at the time.) The toilet was old and a sluggish flusher, and more often than not was full of discolored water because the well was broken or something. To my seven-year-old self, nothing was more terrifying than watching black water slosh around in a perpetually dirty toilet bowl, never quite making it down the drain.

But Fate wouldn’t have us move into the new place quite yet. The people moving into our old house showed up early, leaving my family no choice but to temporarily move in with my grandmother in her two-bedroom apartment. Her toilet was also sluggish, and frequently unflushable as she wasn’t hooked into the town water system. No one was, actually — I think that was before “town water.” I grew up knowing that sometimes you just couldn’t flush the toilet because, well, it wasn’t going to go anywhere until they pumped the septic tank.

Anyway, six people and one sluggish toilet do not functional plumbing make, and my uncle (a different one — this one’s a plumber) had to come over and shove a pipe snake down there. It was pretty gruesome. My delicate sensibilities were properly horrified, and things only got worse when we moved into our new home and the only toilet available was that one. My hatred of the toilet only grew stronger when I fainted off of it once, banged my head on the clawfoot tub, and woke up between the tub and the toilet — not a good place to be when you have both a little brother who can’t aim and a carpeted bathroom.

We finally did get a new toilet in that house, although you still had to be careful about the septic tank, and eventually we built our own house with more than one bathroom and toilets that functioned properly and with clear water, but I had been shaken badly enough that these new toilets weren’t going to soothe me. I still refuse to be soothed, even though I’ve spent the past few years living among toilets who know no septic tanks, who still function when the power is out, and who flush marvelously with nary a complaint. This fear has blossomed to the point that I have a mental list of the acceptable toilets around town, and will not frequent establishments with poor facilities. All the bars in town have removed the lids from the toilet tanks — don’t even get me started on toilets without tank lids — which initially frightened me until I figured out that the drunker I am, the less toilets bother me.

Ooh, now there’s a thought — I should duct-tape a flask to the plunger just in case. And here’s another thought that’s been bothering me lately: Why do they put the emergency valve down behind the toilet? If my crapper is overflowing, why would I want to stick my face down there to turn it off? Discuss.