Feeling a bit Flushed

a) a dead rat

I think he was a rat, anyway. Could've been a mouse. One day, I went in to brush my teeth, and found him stiff and cold in a pile of chewed-up bogroll. Now, if this happened today, I'd fling him out the window, and have done with it. But that day, I was four years old, and not terribly wise in the ways of plumbing. So I picked him up (gingerly, by the tail), plopped him in, and--whoosh!--off he went. Surprisingly, that was the last I saw of him.

There once was a rodent, whose name I've forgot.
His nose had a stripe on--or was it a spot?
One morning, he died, and got flushed down the pot.

b) a pair of shorts

The shorts incident came about half by accident, half by bone-idleness. I was getting changed in a toilet stall, and my shorts fell in. I didn't want to touch them after they'd been in a public facility, so I wrote them off as a loss. Unfortunately, so did the toilet. My shorts resurfaced some hours later, along with several gallons of sewer water.

c) a newspaper

One day, I flushed an entire Thursday edition of the Vancouver Sun down the pipes, along with a fair peppering of rat shit. The next day, I plunged. The day after that, I plunged. The day after that, I plunged some more. Sometimes, on rainy days, the toilet still gurgles. Or my back still hurts. Either way, bad idea.

d) a binliner

I don't know what made me think I could flush what amounts to a giant condom, and get away with it. Nonetheless, I did, and I did.

e) a finger-sized piece of salmon

Strangely enough (what with my being Scottish, and all), I've got a Scot for a mother. Us Scots are very financially responsible, in the Ebenezer Scrooge sense of the words. We save grocery bags, go Christmas shopping at Bargain Harold's, and buy food in bulk. Even fish. I used to open Mother's freezer, and there'd be a phalanx of salmon heads lined up for the charge. One day, thoroughly sick of salmon, I scraped my dinner down the bowl.

Who knew a dead fish would float?

f) Catherine Badcock's head

Though her wee pin head went down fine, her great bull shoulders failed to follow.

g) a pencil

Sometimes, you get a pencil that just won't sharpen. The lead's all broken up inside, and every time you're closing in on the perfect point, it wobbles loose. When this happens, you get revenge on the pencil by flushing it down the toilet. Then, the pencil gets revenge by wrapping toilet paper round itself till the pipes stop up.

h) an enormous turd in an airline bathroom

Two important facts about that turd: first, it was not mine, and second, it was unresponsive to ordinary flushing. I was dismayed. If I left it there, people might blame me for its presence. What if an air hostess blamed me? Could she call me back to the toilet and ask me to clean it up? Could she do this over the loudspeaker? Horror!

There was nothing for it but to grit my teeth, wrap my hands in paper towels, and perform a manual flush.

I think that about does it, if you don't count the time I tried to flush my feet.

Interestingly*, I've never flushed a tampon--not even a flushable one. I'm afraid it'll clog.

* In a broad sense of the word--yeah, English Channel broad. No--Pacific Ocean broad. No, wait! Yo mama broad. Phoah!