Wrong Place at the Wrong Time Part II

Apparently I had just passed through the eye of the hurricane. The few moments of time in which all is calm until the storm reappears. This time the storm was not filled with overflowing toilets and doo-doo, but over-reactions, uncomfortable embarrassment, and hilarious innuendos that only I was getting, and no one else was there to laugh with. Here's the second half of that crappy evening.

After all was clean and settled, the house went back to normal. The kids yelling and playing in the back room, the adults awkwardly staring off in space/watching "you bet your life" on DVD, me stuck in the corner playing solitaire again, and Mary-Jane's mom in the kitchen area finishing up some dishes.

This is when everything started to unravel. Mary-Jane's mom began a thought aloud with, "how could this have happened? Travis, what do you think happened?" The volume of her voice was loud enough for all to hear, and the tone was one that gave me the impression that I must have looked to her like someone holding a plunger, pipe wrench, and having my pants sag low enough for my butt to be showing (I know that is all stereotype, but I couldn't resist). I calmly thought for second, and came up with the best answer to put this matter to rest (and I still claim to be correct), "I'm not quite sure, but I think just got a bit clogged and needed to be plunged, but the handle sticking is what caused the water to overflow, and I didn't get it turned off in time." I'm not sure what my mistake was, or if I even made one, but that answer was not good enough. Perhaps it wasn't even heard by the one who asked.

My verbal response opened a floodgate of loud, persistent questioning by Mary-Jane's mom to everyone and no one all at the same time. She questioned everyone in the room, as if they needed to be spoon fed the question, sometime asked it aloud to the ceiling, but no matter the answer, she was not satisfied. This went on and on, sometimes with the mention of "poor Travis" and "Travis' clog" and other things. Finally, when I'm sure I was sweating through my first layer of clothes, she started in on how this had happened to Clyde (MJ's dad) the other day. I'm not sure to what extent the "same thing" happened, but there was at least a clog that needed to be plunged. She now went full on attack on Clyde, demanding answers, and finally frenzying her into the idea that some things needed to be checked outside near their lagoon, and demanded he go out to check. He was so lucky...he got to leave. I wished that I was Clyde right then (sigh).

The hysteria continued with constant pacing back from the bathroom to kitchen by MJ's mom, all the time barraging us with questions. When she started to worry about having to call the plumber, I stepped in and again calmly suggested that maybe the toilet should just be cleaned through, with some Draino, or maybe a plumber's snake. Finally, an idea that she took hold of! She was very adamant now about trying to get the toilet cleared.

(Side note here: The whole scenario now has been going on for about 45 min - 1 hour, and no one was allowed to use the bathroom any longer, so people were stumbling out into the dark to go number one...thankfully no number twos. There is another bathroom in the house, but MJ's mom was so afraid that all the piping was backing up from the lagoon, she didn't want to take any chances of another "waterfall catastrophe".)

Here's where things got very, very funny for me, but no one else picked up on it in the room. As MJ's mom was looking through the yellow pages at the kitchen counter, Clyde walked back in from outside and the first thing she says to him is,

"Clyde, don't you have a little snake?"

My ears perked up and I looked around, and I was apparently the only one whose mind went straight to the gutter, so I chuckled a bit under my breath and kept playing solitaire, but the fun continued. Clyde replied,

"no, I dont' think so."
She said, "Clyde, yes you do, I know you have a little snake."
"No, I don't Linda."
"Clyde, you mean to tell me you don't have a little snake, I was sure you had one! What about the time you used it two years ago."
"That was Jerry's snake, Linda, and it was a big one."
"Clyde, I know you have a little snake, just go out to the garage and find it!"
"I'm telling you I don't have a little snake!" But he trudged back out to the garage anyway and at this point I was very GLAD that I was not Clyde!

I hope this came across at least half as funny in writing as it was for me to listen to this dialogue. I was holding in laughs so much I was crying (and thankfully facing the other direction from MJ's parents) I was so glad he left, or I might have burst out laughing if they kept this going. Linda had decided by this time that she was going to call a plumber, but he was not going to be able to make it out until the next morning. He said as long as the water in the clean out was clear, we should be fine to flush the toilet (although MJ's mom hovered around the bathroom anytime someone used it to be sure everything went down fine). However, there was one last humorous moment. Clyde walked back in from the garage, head hung down and Linda approached him...

"Well," she said irritated and impatiently
"You were right, I found my snake, but it's broken"

!!!!!

That did it for me, I was trying so hard to hold back laughs that I had to go to another room where I could let out my laughs and tears. I could not believe that NO ONE ELSE in the entire house was picking up on this! I wished so much that M-J could have been there to witness this hilarious conversation!)

Things finally calmed down, and about 1 hour and a half after this whole thing started, MJ and her sister returned home, and everything was relatively back to normal, until upon being prompted by MJ's sister with the question, "How's everything going?", her mom jumped at the chance to recount the entire evening, along with more phrases such as "Travis' poop" and "stuff all over the floor" that of course made me feel like I needed a hole to crawl in, or an airplane to escape in. Either way, I walked over to Mary-Jane and uttered these few words...

"I've had a bad night."

I recounted the evening and the "snake story" to her before we went to sleep, and I received some sympathy and loads of laughs in return. In the morning, I could not have been more ready to leave, and we took off to see friends in Springfield, MO at about 8 in the morning. The plumber came, and found nothing backed up, only that the lagoon level was a bit high, probably due to an unsual amount of rain...yep, that's right, all the fuss was for nothing, and the rest of the time we spent with MJ's parents, there was ABSOLUTELY NO TROUBLE WITH THE TOILET! Shocking, huh?!?!?

Well, this wraps up this recount, hope you enjoyed reading it a lot more than I enjoyed living it!