One of the really big news items in my rather quiet daily event calendar, on Tuesday, was the arrival and installation of a new and higher toilet. The plumbers (family friends) did a great job of replacing the 20-year-old “facility” with the sleek new state-of-the-art inexpensive toilet from Home Depot. Their clean-up work ethics are very high, and the toilet was promptly removed to a location near the front walk.
No matter how grown-up, or nonchalant we as adults may be, a toilet outside of its natural habitat, There is no way that toilet can be made to be esthetically correct. It is stark white, for one thing. simple but ugly in its countenance. A toilet is a toilet, and there are no adjectives to make it sound attractive or versatile in purpose. One just cannot ignore a toilet in the front yard. Some pointed complaining caused the thing to be removed from the middle of the front flower bed, but it still was perched on its temporary wheels in all its glory in front of the garage. A slight improvement…but still I wanted it gone.
So DIY was my only immediate option.
Now, I am somewhat infamous in close circles for making a spectacle of myself, making me look completely ridiculous. I didn’t even consider any side effects or untoward shenanigans. The toilet was still sitting on the flat, roll-away dolly and I felt comfortable in just giving the toilet and its apparatus a slight shove in the right direction, and roll it over to a secluded spot near the turn-around. How hard could it be?
The effect was just what I expected….except that the wheels were facing the opposite direction of where I wanted the thing to go. Its started to move, but it was just out of my reach, and I could not grab it soon enough to steer it away from the side of the car, which was like a magnet calling the ceramic monster toward the freshly washed side of the car.
I had my red steel walking cane in my hand, and I attempted to use it to divert the path. That worked, and the missile veered off, away from the car. However, there is a massive concrete apron which allowed the thing to roll about thirty feet to the grassy front lawn. I, as gracefully as possible, chased after it with my cane in my hand waving wildly at the break-away toilet on its wheels…more in the fashion of a weapon than a guide.
Fortunately, the edge of the concrete at the grass of the yard stopped the motion, and the toilet did not fall off of the dolly (all the way) and I was able to right the thing and push it back in the opposite direction to park it by the turn-around, out of sight.
There was only one witness to my fiasco, that I know of, and that was a guy on a motorcycle cruising by on the road. I’d love to hear his comment to his wife: “today I saw an old lady with a stick chasing after a toilet on wheels that was rolling down a driveway.” I don’t think he could have heard me yelling at the toilet over the noise of his engine. You don’t see something like that every day.
SOMETIMES 