Waiting for the Toilet Installers to Arrive and Replace the Pink Toilet with a White One Department

First I should tell you that the toilet boys are subcontractors. Everyone is a subcontractor nowadays. Need a filling for your tooth? The dentist will be right back but in the meantime Dr. Squatch will be happy to take care of you. He's "board certified" in Malibu. And he knows all about pain management. Many patients prefer him to the real dentist we're told.

The toilet boys came to my house last week and replaced two commodes. Or to be more specific: the commodes and the tanks. Toilets are two part affairs, even nowadays, some 150 years after Sir Thomas Crapper first flushed his flusher for Queen Victoria. I suppose I knew this. Like you I know lots of stuff. For instance one of the early Christian saints lives inside my chimney and he occasionally blows soot into my living room to remind me of my moral obligations. But I digress.

Toilets are two part inventions and that's all you need to know. The toilet boys installed the crappers and fled.

My mistake was to tell them I was blind. If you're new to this game take some advice from me: never never tell the toilet boys you can't see. Its best to act like Al Pacino driving that Ferrari and fooling the traffic cop by pretending to look him dead in the eye. Look the toilet boys right in the eye. Tell 'em the dead crappers are upstairs. Tell 'em not to track feathers on the rug. Whatever. Just leave the blindness out of the affair.

I revealed my blindness to the toilet boys because they were doing the subcontractor fandango. Here's how it works: we're in your house and we can fix your toilets but we really don't want to fix your toilets since that necessitates actually procuring the new toilets which in turn requires us to drive to "Toilet Town" and pick up the new machines (for indeed these are machines in the proper sense) and we don't want to do this–we'd rather that "you" the customer go to "Toilet Town" while we sit here on your wonderful front porch with its inviting rocking chairs. While you're away at "Toilet Town" we will eat our breakfasts and feed the rabbit who evidently lives under your lilac bush and we'll probably tell a couple of dirty jokes.

So of course I told them that I can't drive to "Toilet Town" because I can't see, etc. etc. Oh I tell you the Toilet Boys were crestfallen. But off they went.

When they came back with many boxes I didnt' think much about it. I was busy writing some recommendation letters for former students. I have always found that you can't write a good recommendation if you're thinking about toilets. I left the installation to the professionals.

They made lots of noises. And after an hour they told me they were done. They showed me the new toilets. They invited me to flush. Everyone was happy. They took the old toilets and drove away.

Ah but never never tell them you can't see. When my wife Connie got home and checked things out we discovered that the Toilet Boys had assembled a white commode with a pink tank. Why not? The blind guy won't notice. And probably the blind guy is married to a blind woman–isn't that the way it works? She won't notice either. Who wants to make two trips in one day to "Toilet Town"? Not me. Not me either. So let's just install pinky and get the hell out of Dodge.

Of course not everything is a disability story. For the sake of broad mindedness I should assume that the toilet boys were simply incapable of reading the box or, perhaps like many sighted people they weren't using their eyes at all. (Have you ever noticed how many sighted people become completely blind in airports? It turns out that when sighted people are feeling goal oriented they lose the ability to see what's in front of them. I'll write more on this in a subsequent post.)

Or maybe the toilet boys were suffering from toilet blindness. Its like snow blindness I imagine. If you stare at too many shiny white bowls and tanks you lose the ability to see colors.

Whatever the explanation there it was: a custom assembled pink and white toilet. It looked a bit like the Cadillac that Elvis bought for his mother.

Now I'm awaiting the return of the boys. How long will I wait today? That, as they say, is anybody's guess.

S.K.   

Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University View all posts by stevekuusisto