This morning, Ben had what we term "a messy poop." He wiped. He wiped again. He wiped some more. And so on, and so on. He may have sat down to a bowl with some TP already in it, but the approximately 29 wipings that followed? Overloaded the toilet's capacity to flush it all away. Ben flushed, the water level rose, and I lifted the tank lid and jiggled the whatsit to stop the influx of water.
"Honey! We have a situation here!"
Take a moment to ponder how you would remedy the situation.
The approach that Mr. Tangerine came up with was new to me. He stretched out a wire clothes hanger and used it to tug two thirds of the TP globs away from the escape hatch, and flushed. One third, down the hatch. Then he unleashed half of what remained, and flushed again. After that he neatly disposed of the hanger, and the toilet was cleared via a third flush.
Staged flushing! I never would've thought of that.
Note: This method is unlikely to work for a giant turd like the one in David Sedaris's "Big Boy.
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7 comments:
In such emergencies, I use the wood handle end of the old-fashioned plunger. It works. It's messy, but it works. I like the coat hanger idea better.
We call that a "Soupy Poopy"
Be glad you didn't have to remove the toilet completely.
You know, thank you for posting this. Because PK *always* uses way too much tp, and we have clogs on a semi-regular basis (not to mention the one time when the toilet actually overflowed onto the bathroom floor. That was a real joy, that was).
Hm. I'll have to remember that one. But mostly I'm focusing on the "HE wiped" part. With our five year old, it's still "I wiped his ass, then I wiped his ass again." We've been wondering lately when it makes sense for a kid to wipe his own ass. On one hand, I'd love to be shut of the task. On the other, I don't want my boy to walk around with a poop butt. When did Ben begin doing that himself?
I noticed that "Big Boy" was left out of the audio version of Me Talk Pretty One Day we bought for a road trip awhile back. This is probably wise and has saved many a driver's life. I have never laughed so hard as I laughed while reading that story.
when it makes sense for a kid to wipe his own ass
I think Pk finally started doing that when he was about 6 1/2. And yes, it drove me absolutely batshit that he didn't start earlier. I think he *was* doing it earlier when people other than mama weren't around or at school, but obviously I don't know this for sure.
e., we started expecting Ben to handle wiping around age 5. He still summons us for "a messy poop," but was probably around PK's age, 6 1/2, when he was routinely wiping himself.
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