February 18, 2018

Yesterday the toilet in my principal bathroom got clogged, and there was no one to blame but me. And there was no one to fix it but me. When Bill was alive, I would find him and deliver the dreaded news—“the toilet is clogged!”—and he would fetch the red rubber plunger from the tool room and go to work. And eventfully he would have the problem solved. Like removing dead mice from snap traps, clogged toilets were on the list of Bill’s household duties.

In the seven years since Bill’s death, there have been perhaps a dozen times that the toilet has clogged. Early on I went out and bought a bell plunger for the toilet, having read that the our old plunger was for sinks and tubs, and in fact I bought a short-handled plunger for sinks. It took a little muscle power with the plunger, but I normally could fix the problem.

Yesterday, however, plunging did not help. And flushing the toilet brought the water level dangerously high. I shut the lid and let the water seep down the trap, while I consulted YouTube. If you have not turned to YouTube to find instructions, you are not living in the 21st century. You can find help for anything on YouTube. I have used it to learn how to remove lightbulbs that have broken off at the base (needle-nosed pliers or a raw potato) or how to snake out a sink pipe in the wall (a good quality auger and patience) or how to replace a pull-out kitchen faucet. A woman friend used YouTube to learn how to replace a garbage disposal.

So yesterday I watched a number of YouTube videos, some by professional plumbers, some by amateurs. There were directions for using liquid soap and hot water, for plungers, for toilet augers—and I feared that a toilet auger would be my next Amazon purchase. But one YouTube video by a professional plumber gave me hope; he explained the need to let the bell plunger slowly fill with water before beginning to plunge—and he had the toilet in the video cleared in 11 seconds. And with that guidance, I did the same.

I don’t need my Superwoman cape, just access to the Internet and YouTube.