Here is one of those stories that I really love! It simply concerns real-life events and real-life solutions. It has a happy ending, which is always a plus.
Here's how it begins:
It begins with small pockets. Some shirts have small pockets. Some shirts have none. When I was a smoker, many years ago, I really hated shirts with small, or worse - no pockets. For years I only bought Western-style shirts that had two nice pockets with snap down flaps. I'm over that. Thank goodness.
Occasionally, though, I still end up with a shirt that has a small pocket. However, these days the only thing I need to carry in that small pocket is my glasses. They are less trouble in a shirt pocket than they are tucked into the V-neck of my T-shirt. It's bending over, you see, that causes a problem. Usually (but not always) they stay in a shirt pocket.
In fact, only recently, a shirt pocket was not enough. They fell in the toilet. (I think actually, they might have jumped.)
They jumped in the toilet just as I was hitting the flush handle. I grabbed for them immediately, and actually felt my fingers graze them as they disappeared from sight. Well, I hope that was the glasses. . .
I was stunned.
I had no glasses. They were gone! One minute secure in my pocket, the next minute gone. I feared the worst, toilet wise. I was right. Flushing the toilet became an immediate problem.
Having become recently familiar (after a bathroom remodel) with the shape and style of toilet drains, I knew that my glasses, although out of sight - were probably still in the base of the toilet - somewhere. They were.
They had made themselves into a new entity, and entity that we might refer to as: Drain Sentinel. In their new role, nothing was allowed to pass. The Drain Sentinel stopped all.
A certain amount of effort with that favorite tool of all bathroom users - the faithful plumber's helper - could at least keep the commode working, against the wishes of the Drain Sentinel. However, one cannot ask every person that uses the toilet to be prepared to pump away furiously with the plumbers helper before the toilet's next use. Alas.
Two day's worth of furious plunging did not seem to make any difference. The glasses did not come back to me, and apparently didn't go on down the drain, either. A sad reality began to dawn on me; the toilet would have to come off the floor.
Some years ago I was doing odd jobs for a living. I got a call from a fellow who announced that his children had dropped a shampoo bottle into the toilet. That shampoo bottle had become, in fact, a Toilet Drain Sentinel. We had to carry the toilet into the backyard and blast that shampoo bottle out of the innards with a garden hose. Unseating, hose blasting, and reseating the toilet took all afternoon. I didn't mind, I was getting paid.
I wasn't looking forward to removing this toilet from the floor, for no pay, and no fun. I used the plumbers helper until I didn't feel like it was my helper anymore, at all. I decided to go fishing. Trying to create a reverse suction with the plunger hadn’t worked. Manual fishing seemed to be called for, at this point. Not my favorite idea, but then, nor was the idea of removing the toilet.
My first fishing rod was a tool that has been invaluable in terms of picking up small items from hard-to-reach places. It's called a ‘grabber’. Here it is, in the open position.
I fished with the grabber for many moments, with no positive results. Not wanting to give up too soon, I fished with it some more. In some ways fishing is like fixing computers -- one must just keep on until one achieves the desired result.
I decided that I was using the wrong fishing pole. I couldn't really aim the grabber or tell where it was trying to grab. I wanted a claw like device for my next tool. A kitchen fork seemed a likely candidate! Ann found me one that I could use, from our camping equipment. I bent it this way and that way in the vice until it had a nice 'S' shape that I felt would reach up into the trap and grab my glasses. I fished with the bent fork for quite awhile. No bites.
It was a dessert fork. I decided It was about an inch too short. I asked Ann for a dinner fork. She gave me a funny look. . .
I decided to try a different fishing rod.
Looking about the shed, an immediate tool came to mind -- a coat hanger! I grabbed one off the line and bent it into what I felt would be the perfect fishing rod. I began to fish with it. Not quite right. Bend it some more. Adjust, clip with the nippers, go fishing. No. Adjust some more, keep fishing. No.
No luck. Frustration. I was very near to giving up, after this prolonged effort. Intuitively, I felt that the ‘stalk’ of my fishing rod was bending when I needed it to be straight. Back to the shed. I re bent another (stronger) coat hanger and returned for more fishing. My darling wife happened to be in the bathroom as I reached in there with my new fishing rod and produced my glasses. Joy of joys!
As always, perseverance paid off. It's hard to know when to give up and try something else. The temptation is to give up too soon. In this case, giving up would have meant resigning myself to taking the toilet off the floor - a job to which I truly did not look forward. I'm glad I kept fishing.
Here are the various tools, bent fork, ‘grabber’, and the successful (!) bent coat hanger. And, of course, my dang glasses.
So there you have it, for now. Perhaps it says something about a person’s retirement when the high point of the day is fishing glasses out of the toilet. Oh, well.
After I had rescued them, I almost immediately defeated my success by popping them in the microwave, with some obscure notion of sterilizing them. I forgot that there is quite a bit of metal in a pair of glasses. I did snatch them out at the first sign of sparking and popping! And I am using them as we speak.