View from the North 40: On constitutions and phones

Tragedy has been stalking my house, doing dirty deeds.

Tragedy, as you may know, is one of the lapdogs of the Universe, which likes loose its lapdogs to nip at my heels and bite me in the backside, maybe cause a stampede or an avalanche of irony.

The lapdogs are kind of like the hounds of hell, but with a cruel sense of humor that tends to make their irony worse than their bite. Still hurts, though.

Late last week the valve connected to the floaty-thingy inside our toilet tank failed, allowing water to continue running, flooding the black water from our septic tank out into the yard.

Perhaps this doesn’t sound like an actual tragedy — it’s not like it backed up into the house.

True, but still, this did happen, literally, at the same time our long-anticipated house project came to a grinding, untimely, halt last week, and John and I were trying to deal with that kind of gut-wrenching stress that makes a person skip meals (even a dedicated eater like me).

To operate the toilet, we had to turn the water line behind the toilet on for flushing and off during idle times — every time — until we could find a new valve (which we, of course, stored in a safe and logical storage place in the big shop before it got turned upside down for remodeling — thus playing right into the Universe’s twisted plot).

Under these circumstances Sunday, John retired to the bathroom for what he calls his “morning constitution.”

And just so you know, this activity has nothing to do with the document of laws governing this land but rather everything to do with the fact that I won’t let him say “BM” because it sounds like something a doddering old man would brag about to his cronies — and he turned down my suggestion of “little-library time” because it sounded too “childish.” But I’m right. Right? Because he’s doing more reading than law-making in there. Well, that's discussion for another day.

Meanwhile, back at the toilet ...

Sunday, when John’s morning constitution was goin’ down, literally, he remembered that he needed to turn the water to the tank on, so he quickly bent down to turn the knobby-thingy, like any man of action would do.

It was, of course, at this moment that his cellphone shot out of his pocket and down into the swirling maelstrom of “constitution” and disappeared into our septic system.

He said there was a fraction of a moment in which he could’ve reached in and saved the phone, but being a man of squeamish sensibilities he, instead, said something that could be translated to: “Oh ‘constitution!’”

Of course, we tried to call the phone to see if it was snagged in the line somewhere salvageable, but it didn’t ring. It must have drown instantly, or died of shame.

Really, though, you could see from our relief that we didn’t want it back at that point anyway.

John composed a few poems in tribute to his long lost cellphone and its epic demise, but no other tribute was as touching as the short eulogy he spoke over the spot the septic tank lurks underground in the yard: “Sorry about your burial place, buddy. You know, now — they lied to Nemo. All drains don’t lead to the ocean.”

(Words that rhyme with “loo” for $100, Mr. Trebek. But seriously, if you know John, call him. He needs your number to rebuild his contact list at [email protected].)