The Toilet’s Revenge!

Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I KNOW it was coming?

You think the toilet started leaking, don’t you? Oh, no! Not THIS toilet. It’s much too subtle for that. This particular toilet (see my postings of February 26 and following) heard all of my gloating and, in true devious toilet fashion, lulled me into a false sense of security. Even though I told you that I KNEW it would start leaking sooner or later, it waited until today—a full seven weeks later—to take its revenge.

At the risk of offending my female readers, I’m beginning to suspect that this toilet is a she. I mean; what male do you know who could devise a scheme like this and have the patience to wait seven weeks to pull it off?

OK, here’s what she did. She conspired (through a direct pipeline, of course—how else?) with the faucet fittings under the master bathroom sink. Now this toilet is in the hall bathroom, so she HAD to communicate through the pipes. Most likely Morse code, using water pressure pulses for dots and dashes.

Anyway, this morning, after all shaving and other morning bathroom activity had been completed, Carol was in the kitchen and I just HAPPENED to be putting something away in the bedroom. I heard a sudden loud roaring from the bathroom that could only be water at full pressure, blasting against other objects. It sounded like your water hose with a nozzle on it spraying at full stream against the siding on your house, or against light-weight aluminum hub caps on your car.

My first thought was, “TOILET!” I rushed to the bathroom door and saw water cascading out from the cabinet under the sink.

What I did next was stupid. But I’ll bet it’s what every one of you would have done. I opened the cabinet door to look!

Of course, I got a face full of water and couldn’t see anything.

I yelled to Carol, “Major water leak in the bathroom!” while I sprinted, barefoot and dripping, to the front door and then outside to the main water shut-off by the foundation. The flow only lasted about one minute.

When I got back inside, Carol had assessed the situation and was already sucking up the water with a carpet steam cleaner/vacuum combination we’d bought a year or so ago, and which happened to be available in the spare bedroom closet.

Thirty minutes later I examined the evidence. One of the flexible water supply lines from the shut-off to the sink faucet had just come apart. All at once. No warning drip, no slow leak, just an instantaneous failure.

Can you see how devious this plot was? The toilet chose to move the location of her revenge to another part of the house to throw off suspicion! She waited long enough that our guard was down. Then she arranged a full frontal assault designed to inflict the maximum damage and pain.

On reflection, I’m also convinced that the sink faucet is male. He went along with her scheme, seduced by her flirtations and promises of future favors. But being a typical male, he couldn’t wait (as she no doubt wanted him to) until we were out of the house or out of town. That would have caused the absolute maximum damage she no doubt desired.

No, he had to let loose the fitting when we were there so he could see all the action, the running around, the yelling and the panic. Yep, typical male.

So, what did he get for listening to her whisperings in Morse code? He got emasculated! I took off both of his flexible supply hoses and replaced them with other lines. Prosthetics, so to speak.

We now have a fan blowing on the small area of damp carpet in the bedroom just outside the bathroom door. We were very lucky to so minimize the quantity of water that escaped. All is quiet again, and the cost of the repair was minimal.

But I can hear a quiet, female giggling coming from the direction of the hall bathroom.

(Do your household plumbing fixtures communicate? Are you sure?)