By Mark Tulin
It was horrible. No, it was frustratingly painful. I had a clogged sink in the bathroom. The water wouldn’t go down no matter what I tried. So finally, I plunged, poured Drano down it several times to loosen the muck, and followed by scalding hot water. Nothing but a sink full of water with a few flying ants bathing in it.
I tried everything, including a long squiggly thing, jamming it as far down the pipe as it would go. And, although I extracted a bunch of hairy, black sticky stuff, the sink remained clogged.
I looked on Angie’s List for a plumber but remembered the last plumber I had replaced a toilet seat for a hundred bucks. And the plumber before that wanted to put in a whole new set of copper piping, the expensive kind.
I have two master’s degrees and should be smart enough to figure out how to unclog a sink. But I never took that class in college, just courses like Muskrat Linguistics and Pygmy Dietetics.
I have to scratch my head. There was no reason why my drain was backed up. I lived alone. I was bald. I didn’t shave. I didn’t shovel cement or tree bark into the sink. I just washed my face with an mild antibacterial soap and used my electric toothbrush.
So, did I call a plumber? Nope, I refused. Instead, I left the sink full of water and completely ignored it. Then, I closed the bathroom door because I didn’t want my cat to drink the Drano and find him as stiff as a board in the morning. Every few days, I would look at the sink hoping for a miracle, but no such luck.
I decided I would never use the bathroom. I planned to move out of the apartment in three months when the lease was up. Instead, I used the kitchen sink to wash my face or the public restroom at Burger King. There was a Starbucks around the corner, but their sinks were grimy, and toilets were clogged with feminine hygiene napkins. Plus, there was a waiting line of anorexics.