Houston, We Have a Problem

I look around frantically for a plunger. Like the hotel is actually going to put a plunger in each room. Shower cap, yes. Plunger, no.

I am envisioning Scott returning to the room. Whistling like in the movies where the poor unsuspecting boob is about to inadvertently walk in on the robbery or the wife in bed with the mobster or the bears eating the contents of his kitchen.

I decide to try to flush once more. I am a pro at clogged toilets, after all. Hil is a career, card-carrying toilet clogger. I have put my plumber's kids through college with house calls from the the self-anointed Toilet Doctor. I know all the tricks. I have all the tools. Hil has clogged more toilets than Carters has little liver pills. When her little choo choo pulls out of Constipation Station, you'd better have some Liquid Plumr and an arsenal of plungers on hand. Girlfriend can turn a toilet bowl into the Hoover Dam. She's that good.

The water goes down. The other "contents" don't. Nifty. I decide to send up a flare.

I text Scott. "Problem..."

He thinks I'm asking. "Nope."

I write, "No...here. Toily won't flush."

And then, to prepare him for the horror of it all. "Well, not completely..."

"Is it going to overflow?"

I think about how I should answer. "No. The water has gone down but "the item" hasn't."

"Oh" he writes. I am imagining that he is running toward the road to begin hitchhiking home.

And then he writes, "Should I bring the Navy?"

I smile but I am still sweating. This will be my darkest hour. I may as well have grown a wart on my chin with a big black hair long enough to tether a yacht with.

"I think the Coast Guard can handle it," I attempt to joke, however weakly.

And I wait. But while I wait I text my childhood friend Kelli. She will appreciate my predicament like no other. Her father-in-law has just died and she could use the humor. I take to instant messaging on Facebook and deadpan, "On a lighter note, I am on vacation with Scott and have just completely clogged the toilet in our hotel room."

She immediately writes back "Way to go! How romantic!"

And I hear Scott coming down the veranda. And yes, he's whistling. I've locked the door so he has to knock. When he does, I leave the bathroom where I've been keeping vigil and open the door just enough to stick my face out. He says, "Is Hil here?"

And I am immediately hysterical laughing as hard as I have ever laughed in my entire life. I open the door so he can step into the room and then panic and run back to the bathroom and slam the lid closed and sit on it so no one can see "the item" without moving me first. As if that would be so hard to do.

Scott begins to laugh. And by now I am laughing to the point of tears at the absurdity. He is calling me a Gus and I am crying laughing about how funny this would look to an outside observer.

But still. I don't want him to see it. And I certainly don't want him to smell it either. I would seriously sell myself into slavery to avoid that particularly acute form of shame. It would give new meaning to Eau du Toilet.

I hop up from the seat still laughing and wave him back a few steps so he can't peer into the bowl. And out of sniffing range. I tell him I'm going to flush one more time for good luck. He is white with panic but I am a woman possessed. I can see his MacGyver wheels turning like he's going to take a hanger from the closet, bend it into a figure eight, and fasten the toothpaste lid to the end with some bubblegum...

By some act of God, (is there a patron saint of BM?) it all goes down. The whole shootin' match. No sign of the horrors that once were.

I am weak with laughter and so is Scott. Another corner turned in our ever evolving life together. It's cute that we have this one last Politeness between us. Even if it is just an illusion. One of Love's little kindnesses.