#55: "the littlest room"

I should probably be somewhat embarrassed in telling this story, but we're all mostly friends here so I'm going to do it anyway. 

For those of you that have a clue as to what I'm going to write about based on the title, let me assuage your fears now: there will be no discussions about any bodily processes in this letter. Instead, this is all about how, for some strange universe defying, karma ignoring reason, I have bad luck with bathrooms when I'm traveling for the holidays. 

This goes so far past a clog (they've happened, and it's totally normal and OK to have to spend an hour mopping the floor because you left the littlest room and didn't hang around to see that the water works had other ideas). It's not just problems with shower leaks, shower curtains falling down because tension rods don't work, or sink faucets coming off in your hands (as I can recall that's the only one that I just walked away from exasperated).

This year's trip is no exception, I must sadly admit. Thankfully it was not something I caused, but something I discovered. Last night the fill valve in the bathroom of the room I'm staying in seized, so the tank wouldn't fill. It's pretty cold up here on this second floor, but not enough to freeze pipes (and there wasn't water shooting everywhere). No, the poor thing just shit the bed and died. Thankfully it's an easy fix and my stepmother-in-law had someone here to sort it out by the afternoon.

But it could have been worse. Oh, it could have been so much worse - like that time in Saint Louis.

The holiday season of 2002 was nothing special. I'm sure I went to visit my parents' country estate, maybe my brother and is now wife came to visit. There was probably turkey, potatoes, stuffing. It's only really of note in that we would have done that on Christmas proper, leaving me back in RVA for the next week with way too much time on my hands, as UR always closed between Christmas and New Years. 

The woman I was dating at the time was originally from NoVa, and the Christmas prior I'd gone to visit her and her family at their home in that godforsaken suburban nightmare hellhole. During the year of 2002 her parents moved to an interesting city full of mostly awful sports fans: Saint Louis, Missouri. I'd visited them in the summer, but I hadn't had any plans to visit at Christmas. After a few long talks on the phone, I decided that I'd drive out to visit (sidebar: you can take one interstate from RVA to STL). That's when it all went wrong.

Her parents bought the equivalent of a four story brownstone in downtown St. Louis. They were constantly working on it; when I'd visited in the summer I'd installed a number of ceiling fans and a kiln. They'd just finished remodeling the bathrooms on the top floor of the house when I arrived (as in the day before). The next morning I got up to take a shower as if it were a normal day. I did my business on the toilet, showered, and left the room. Everything was as it should be.

Unbeknownst to me the toilet hadn't been installed properly. I was the first one to actually use it (not just test flush), and sitting down had caused two problems: the gasket in the floor came unsealed, and the tank cracked around an overtightened bolt. How did we discover this, you ask? Oh, you know, just during a late brunch in the kitchen an hour or so later when the ceiling started dripping. Water had been leaking down three floors by the time it made itself visible. 

Needless to say that took an already weird trip and pissed all over it. We broke up very soon after, not because of the bathroom, butt because she wasn't worth a shit. She never did like a good pun.