By now it should be generally understood that I am not legally permitted to work in Canada.
Friday night (rather, Saturday morning at 3:30 or so), I was at the movie theatre not working, like usual. As Poor Kyle was using a leaf blower to tornado all the popcorn from the back rows of each theatre to the front [a treacherous task that’s not nearly as easy as it sounds, especially when the wretched little puffs of popped corn get trapped in sticky spills of Slurpees™], I was {not} cleaning restrooms. Of which there are five.
And in those restrooms are toilets. Countless toilets, or so it seems.
Now, I have had many jobs in my life, some of which have been most unglamorous. One summer I was a delivery driver for Jason’s Deli™ [totally not worth the effort, by the way–don’t even bother]; I’ve delivered newspapers [which has caused me to loathe the texture of newsprint–I can hardly touch a paper today without cringing]; and worked as a cleaning person for multiple businesses and residencies [none of which have been too horrible…just slightly degrading].
This movie theatre job is by far the most un-classy of them all, combined. Tons of filthy, soggy garbage [and I do mean “tons” in the literal sense], numberless buckets of murky mop water filled with degreaser, and that smell of wet, stale popcorn…I will never forget it…any of it.
At any rate, I was there {not} scrubbing toilets, while Poor Kyle was busy {legally} leaf-blowering himself into an early grave, and I came across a men’s restroom with an unusual amount of water seeping from the stalls. With a sinking feeling in my gut, I approached the stalls, knowing what I would find behind Door Number 3–a flood.
And of course I was right (as I am wont to be), but it was the sort of right that made me wish I’d never gotten anything right in my life, if only I had been wrong about this one…
There it sat, my deadly foe: a toilet, filled to the brim with yellowish water. It had a layer of bunched up waste paper skimming the top. I didn’t have to move the paper to know what was beneath, but I did anyway (wearing rubber gloves [which aren’t very comforting during such a crisis, because I was still using my dadgum hands to tinker around in a toilet full of feces]), and what I saw made my insides churn…
A cow had come to see a movie {presumably “Quantum of Solace”} and had used the toilet, laying a mound of manure so huge that it simply couldn’t be flushed, though our bovine friend had kindly tried (hence the water everywhere). From the looks of things, he’d had too much popcorn and it went–quite literally–right through him.
And I drew the line. “I am a cleaning person,” I thought to myself, “which may not be very fancy, but it works. I will clean toilets. I will clean floors. I will clean spills of nacho cheese. Shoot–I would even clean human waste if it was smeared on the toilet seat, because that would be filth, and I could see the reasoning. But this? This is plumbing. I am not a plumber–I don’t know how to plumb. I draw the line at this. There has to be a line somewhere, and this is where it is.”
I was in hysterics at the end of my monologue, and as luck would have it, Poor Kyle was just then coming to ask me a question. I took him to see my mess of dung, and he looked at me sympathetically.
“You’ll just have to use a plunger,” he assessed with a half-smile, but I didn’t want his sympathy or his smirks…I wanted him to do it for me.
“No!” I declared passionately, “I cannot be expected to do this! I am not a plumber…I’m not doing it. I’ll clean everything I can and just leave a note for management that they need to call a professional…” Poor Kyle reasoned with me that, in fact, this was part of the job description, but I was persistent and wouldn’t budge. So he said he’d do it when he was finished with the popcorn blowing, but before he vacuumed. Which was exactly what I wanted to hear; only I didn’t expect to feel so guilty when I heard it…
“Poor Kyle works so hard all week, just to have his weekends ruined by this lousy piece of poo job, and he’s already sweating buckets, and we have at least five more hours here, and even though I’m exhausted, I know he is, too… There’s no way I can make him plunge this lousy toilet, too.”
So I did it. I found the plunger, which turned out to be some ridiculous accordion-looking thing and took me awhile to understand…and I plunged. I plunged that scat with a fervor I didn’t know I had energy to muster. I plunged the mucky-muck over and over, forming a rhythm that worked nicely with my sentiments, “I [plunge] hate [plunge] this [plunge] job [plunge] I [plunge] hate [plunge]…”
Of course, the privy was already overflowing when I started, and my sloshing around only got more gallons of water everywhere…I learned to keep my mouth closed, that’s for sure. Eventually, the excrement went the way of all poop, and I wiped my brow with the shoulder of my t-shirt. I was more tired than before, and I’d lost my faith in humanity, to boot. I’d done it–I defeated the ordure and could carry on my cleaning way, but I was changed…
…I had taken one for the team; I sacrificed my own personal comfort so my husband wouldn’t have to. I felt like I had never shown my love for Poor Kyle in a more profound way.
How do I love thee, Poor Kyle? Let me count the waste…
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