Dear Gentle Reader,
We need to talk.
About apples.
People have threatened to remove fruit bowls and my access to bathrooms, should I come to visit.
It's not so bad.
Not any more, at least.
And it could be worse.
I could have flushed a koi-sized goldfish...
(That story belongs to the ineffably fabulous Heidelweiss; she is possibly a long lost sister of mine.)
Then, someone sent me an email claiming that I was a fraud.
A fraud!
What!
...
Why? Because, to check out my story, they tossed an apple into their toilet's cistern and it wouldn't sink...
...
Quite a silly thing to do, really.
What if it had worked?
...
Toilets are not to be messed with.
...
Speaking of messing with toilets...
I could tell you about high school, when, having liberated a chunk of potassium from the chemistry supply closet, I dropped it into a water closet (a toilet for my Southern cousins) to see what would happen.
It was wonderful.
Flames, shaped by the toilet and funnelled by the bowl, flew up at my face which was peering down, intently, to watch the sparks.
Those flames licked my ears and eyelashes as my head instinctively sought shelter from the pillar of fire, the onslaught of toilet Armageddon, which I had wrought and unleashed.
In the second, more explosive, round (pillar) of flames, they, the flames, shot above the metal sides of the toilet stall.
I repeat, above the metal walls of the stall.
Pyromaniacal heaven, baby; I was a teenage boy.
(On the flip side, I am sure I created plumber hell. Not to mention whoever had to write the incident report about a singed toilet seat.)
This was in grade something or other; I am not sure which (too many provinces, too many schools).
I was awestruck, and no lasting damage was done.
Unlike when a friend tried the same thing with a lump of sodium.
And flushed the toilet.
It is astonishing how much water a toilet holds.
While it is still toilet shaped.
It's also astonishing the chemicals we were able to get our hands on from the supply rooms at various schools.
It was fortunate for me that my Dad moved to a new city every year. No teacher was ever prepared for me.
Some teachers even felt sorry for the poor guy who had been transplanted from one city to the next. Well, at the beginning of the year they thought that. Not so much by the end of each year.
But, I did help draw down supplies of dangerous chemicals across the breadth of Canada.
And, I digress. Back to the apple and the surprising email I received.
An unnamed person wrote me an email claiming I was a fake.
Why? Because they threw an apple into a toilet and flushed it, just to check out my story.
When you are thinking of flushing apples down toilets, remember that apples float. Think of Halloween and bobbing for apples.
Well, not in a toilet, unless you truly had a messed up childhood.
Fortunately, for the person who tried to replicate my story, their apple bobbed, as apples are wont to do.
The natural buoyancy of a whole apple means that you have to make more of an effort to get it into a toilet's piping.
You have to assist the unwilling apple; hold its unhappy head below the water line when flushing.
Jab it down with your brother's towel, or something like that.
Once the apple was well into the toilet's piping, it bobbed up somewhere or other and formed a fantastic seal. (Phoque!)(Seal in French, though the kind that swims.)
Which was why that apple couldn't just be flushed down or plunged up and out of the pipes.
And toilet snakes couldn't budge the apple because of its inherent solidity.
Presumably the wax on the apple's skin (they used to use that on apples before they stored them in sealed warehouses surrounded by nitrogen gas) protected the apple too, chemically, from liquid plumber.
Poor Dad.
I won't say whose towel was the fortunate one to achieve new bacterial glory, but, it sure wasn't mine.
The Heroine read that post, turned to look at me, and shook her head with complete belief and mirth.
And sympathy for my Dad.
The Heroine only had one query.
"Why would you flush an apple down the toilet after taking a bite?"
"That doesn't sound like you at all. You eat the core..."
True.
Now I do.
Tschuess,
Chris
Postscript:
Your next question is likely...
WHY?
I wrote that down, for this post.
Then the Heroine told me to delete.
She said that none of you would believe it.
Even though it is true.
*sigh*
The travails of living a post-credible life.
Posts
12 comments:
Talk about mirth! I'm nearly on my knees. The bit that really creased me up was the bobbing for apples, 'Well, not in a toilet, unless you truly had a messed up childhood.'
I hope Littl' Nicky grows up like me, respecting toilets. A certain daughter, however, did block up the sink with oatmeal after reading that washing the face with it was good for the skin ... and she also blocked the sink at college by pouring down plaster of paris ...
Such a treat: a new post from the inimitable Sepiru!
"onslaught of toilet Armageddon"
You didn't dissapoint.
I find you fantastical -
but credible.
Ole` !
Aloha, your fan, Cloudia
Oh boy!! I laughed until I cried on this one.
So Chris, I hope you are safely back in Hong Kong, or I suspect the airlines will refuse to let you board (or use the airplane restrooms). You have to be careful what you print online nowadays, you may get onto someone's list... as a toilet terrorist.
*SNORTgigglegigglegiggle*
Hilarious post! Ooh, how I want a piece of potassium and a little-used public bathroom to--aah--verify your youthful scientific discoveries with!
By the way, I think apple wax occurs naturally. I've heard it reduces evaporation from the tree.
A FAKE?! PuhLease! Has this phantom emailer NEVER flushed a foreign object down a toilet? Pfff. It takes skill. Chris, you are aware that apples will grow in your stomach if you eat the core, right? Do not, I repeat, do NOT follow your apples with a dirt chaser.
The answer to "why" never matches the daring of the deed; however, in your case, being one of the nuttier bits in the granola, I'm sure there's an exception. Willie Sutton's was the best, when asked: Why do you rob banks? answered: Because that's where the money is.
Your toilet and chemical experiments are the best. I tried mixing explosives but never had the right chemicals. Finally, frustrated with it all, I mixed every chemical in my set together and ended up with - a mess of inert chemicals; much like using every crayon in the box leaves you with battleship gray.
Good piece. Laughed out loud.
Apples... oh before i never was attracted by, now , i think because the color is wonderful i like pretty mutch ,. say hellow to REGINA
Dear Raph,
I am so pleased to have brought a mighty man like yourself to your knees. The pen is indeed mighty.
The oatmeal extravaganza sounds fun, as does ridding the world of excess plaster of paris by pouring down the sink.
I know someone (not me), a chemist even, who kept disposing of acid down the sink in a disused work kitchen that he used as his laboratory...
He did this until one day the old copper piping disintegrated... followed by the containers for the chemicals he was keeping under the sink.
The hazardous materials team was none too happy, and the workers compensation board safety team was beyond incredulous.
We worked at a science centre creating exhibits and experiments and shows to dazzle and inform the public.
Did the college have anything pithy to say about the sink, or was it concerned a hazard of offering a B.F.A.?
Dear Cloudia,
Pleased to be credible. Many people nod in polite disbelief, at least until they know me for a lot longer and witnessed some of the capers that attach themselves to me.
Dear Teresa,
Thanks for using the "T" word... now I am surely on someone's list.
:)
Happy to have helped moisturize the cheeks.
Dear OxyJen,
Take pictures for me.
Wipe the door to remove prints.
As per the wax, yes, it does occur naturally, but warehouses used to coat the apples with more wax as a prophylactic against decay. Go figure.
Dear Heidelweiss,
Dirt chaser? I go for loam! Or Chocolate mousse, (looks like loam but much tastier).
I remember a book, from when I was a kid, about a gentleman who never cleaned his ears and rose bush grew out of one ear.
I used to think that was a fantastic idea.
PS. Love the "Pfff". I do that all the time along with a few "Tsss".
If you can do those, and have a few sharp bursts of air shooting out of closed, vibrating lips, you can hold your side of a conversation in a Flemish bar for hours.
I know. I've done it. Flems aren't so discerning as to the quality of the response that they receive in conversation, apparently, as long as they think someone is listening to them and huffing and puffing at the right places...
Dear Richard,
Oh, youthful lunacy.
I mixed heaps of great things up.
I made some of everything, until ...
Hmm. Maybe I shouldn't put that story out into the public. I'll get flagged for youthful indiscretions.
Suffice to say, Richard, that things with me were only inert when the fire went out or the boom had come and gone.
Dear Elaine,
I'll say hello to Regina, and will start posting mid May when my upcoming work bolus is digested.
I might even come to Florence to say hi in the fall!
Tschuess,
Chris
What a critical reader! I mean that in a good way - someone who not only reads and enjoys but thinks. I did not think to try this myself, but took you at your word. Now, maybe I might have to risky my old home's aging plumbing to try.
Junosmom,
...
!
:)
Tschuess,
Chris
Anything to avoid boredom: we must have had similar childhoods. Loved it! It fits right up there with my oldest brother making a pipe rocket and using gunpowder out of our father's shotgun shells. It flew up and out of our backyard and down through the roof of a greenhouse three blocks over. There were inquiries, of course, but my mother, bless her soul, had no idea where the gunpowder came from. She never thought to ask me anything because I was the youngest and not likely to know anything (though I tagged along after my brothers because they did fun things, but the eldest did the best things).
Anything to avoid boredom: we must have had similar childhoods. Loved it! It fits right up there with my oldest brother making a pipe rocket and using gunpowder out of our father's shotgun shells. It flew up and out of our backyard and down through the roof of a greenhouse three blocks over. There were inquiries, of course, but my mother, bless her soul, had no idea where the gunpowder came from. She never thought to ask me anything because I was the youngest and not likely to know anything (though I tagged along after my brothers because they did fun things, but the eldest did the best things).
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