Today was an exciting day. As most of you know I am spending the summer
with Katie Smith and her family. Katie, her sister, and I have had an
excruciatingly amazing weekend. It started with going to the beach and
ended this afternoon when we went to the movies. Upon returning to the
fortress they call a home, we saw Mrs. Smith in the kitchen window above
the sink. We soon entered the humble abode and saw that not only was
Mrs. Smith standing at the sink; she seemed to be wrestling and
struggling with something in the sink and it was making noises that can
only be described as a gnarling, sinus-infected pig. As we gingerly
stepped forward, we noticed a beautiful, puckish orange color in the
water with tiny green specks that looked like the remnants of parsley or
possibly cilantro. The only thing we could do was look at Mrs. Smith
with raised eyebrows and plugged nostrils.
With a look of despair
and embarrassment she began to tell us what happened whilst we were
gallivanting around time. She was hungry and looked in the fridge for
something to make for dinner. It didn't take her long to find several
things that weren't necessarily edible and could qualify for living
organisms in her refrigerator, one of them being a big pan of spaghetti.
She couldn't find the trashcan (Katie, her sister, and I had moved it
to another room we were cleaning earlier in the day) so she decided to
put it down the garbage disposal. It was angel hair pasta, surely the
disposal could handle it...famous last words. As the water trickled
down the drain, it took pieces of pasta, sauce, and mold with it.
Before long the sink could take no more, who could blame it? It began
to gurgle and moan as if it had indigestion because that was the only
way it could tell us that its arteries were clogged worse than Austin
traffic at rush hour. But by this time it was too late; the damage had
been done. All of the spaghetti had been put into the disposal. This
was when we walked in the door.
Mrs. Smith first tried to get the
spaghetti out by hand (after turning the disposal off, of course) but to
no avail. She was in the middle of this endeavor when we arrived at
the fortress. Katie decided to get the plunger and obviously plunge the
sink to see if she could dislodge the spaghetti and cilantro remnants
from the pipes. After several minutes of this entertainment...er
um...purposeful and industrious undertaking that required much effort I
decided to call my Uncle Mike because he is a Jack of All Trades and
Master of Some. He has worked as an electrician, plumber, lawn
manicurist, and pretty much every other form of manual labor, so he was
an obvious choice when we needed an expert. After he stopped laughing
at our predicament, he started asking me questions using words that were
not in my vernacular: Is there anything in the trap? Is the tapped
tailpiece downstream of the clog? Does the sink have a gerber faucet?
After answering these questions as most uneducated plumbers would, “I
don’t know” “I don’t know” and “I don’t know, but why do we need to know
the faucet? Nothing’s wrong with the faucet!” He asked what we did
know. We knew that the blades were still capable of spinning but it was
not draining, and when we used the plunger some of the “water” oozed up
through the air vent attached to the disposal at the top of the sink.
Other than that, it was all still as mysterious as a mosquito’s’ purpose
in this life. He instructed us to take an allen wrench and unscrew the
bottom of the disposal. This wouldn’t have been that hard had we known
where an allen wrench was. Katie was sent to find an allen wrench and
came back with a tool box and handed us a monkey wrench. If you know
anything about tools, you know that these two tools are quite different.
After searching for several minutes in several different places I went
out to my car and retrieved my toolbox. I found several different
sizes of allen wrenches, and started trying to unscrew what it was that
we were supposed to unscrew. It wouldn’t. We turned it one way and
then the other, and it just wouldn’t do anything. Oh, it would turn,
but it wouldn’t get tighter or loosen so we gave up on that.
Mike
then told us to locate the black wire that ran from the wall into the
disposal and to disconnect the black pipe from the disposal. Only as an
afterthought did he add, “And you might want to put a bucket or bowl
under there because water will come out if there’s water in the sink.”
There was, and it did. With every piece of pipe we disconnected,
seemingly infinitesimal pieces of spaghetti heaved and hurled themselves
from the PVC. Most of them made it in the bucket at the bottom of the
sink cabinet, but it seemed as if the grossest ones managed to land on
the floor. With every new pipe vomiting projectile we bursted into
laughter and grimaced with horror. Finally, the pipes had given up all
they had in them and then some. A Windex bottle broke in the process
(we’re still not entirely sure how that happened) and now all we had to
do was clean ourselves up and mop the kitchen floor. Oh, and put the
sink back together again.
After thanking Mike many times over,
praising him with the sincerest ones I could muster, and him reminding
me that one should never put spaghetti down the disposal, or macaroni,
or instant mashed potatoes, or any other pasta or starch, I hung up and
started to help clean up the mess we made.
Too add to all of this,
Katie’s father was due home any minute, and there was pipe puke all over
the kitchen floor, sink cabinet, and us. Another dilemma was that we
could not remember exactly how the pipes fit together. Sure it sounds
simple enough, but when we took everything apart and took it outside to
wash it off, it seemed sometimes as if we had too many parts, and at
other times not enough. When we finally got the idea of how it all went
back together I noticed that one more car was in the driveway as
before. But where was Mr. Smith? He wasn’t on the sidewalk on the way
in, he wasn’t by the gate. He didn’t seem to be anywhere. Then we saw
him finally get out of the car. Everything he did seemed to be in slow
motion as we frantically pieced together the sink. He seemed to mosey
around, first to close the gate, then back to the car, then a different
car, and finally towards the back door. Katie’s sister then opened the
back door and in the most conspicuous voice ever, “Hey Daddy! How are
you? How was your day?” Granted we were going to tell him anyways, but
why bother him before he was even in the door? We did finish before he
walked in the door, but we hadn’t fully bleached and unsullied the
floor. It must be tough when you walk through the door after a long day
and the first thing you see is four women trying to put a sink back
together. Granted we got it back together, but we wouldn’t have had to
had we not messed it up in the first place. Still the Smith girls say
that their father very much appreciated that we tried our best to fix it
instead of making him dinner and trying to appease him when we didn’t
try to fix it but left it to his capable hands. He checked it and we
don’t have any major problems, the sink’s cleaner than it’s been in a
while, and the disposal sounds healthy and cheerful once again.
Tomorrow I think we’re going to try and put mushy vegetables down the
garbage disposal. Mike never said anything about fruits and vegetables
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