Ruined by Plunger

We have been fortunate for almost three decades.

This apartment, in this house we’ve called our home since the mid-1980s, was not really supposed to happen. I came along with Mom for moral support, but at that point we were both looking for a place to live independently.

The fact is that she could not afford it on her own, and I would have never considered it on my own. But once we stood in the space, and I saw the look in her eye (yearning and heartbreak commingling in one sigh), I offered to pay half of everything and urged Mom to sign the lease.

We’d have two bedrooms, a huge living room, a dining room (something I am not willing to negotiate on). The kitchen was smallish, but workable. There were closets in each room plus a bigger closet in the hallway. Eventually, after our landlady’s father had passed, I took over his old room and made it my study, and the entire second floor became ours.

In the space of time we’ve been at this place, a baby girl was born (now our acting landlady). We’ve had two dogs. Our boy has gone on to college, left the house, married and has two gorgeous little girls of his own.

We bought a new bathroom pail and filled it with things a new home needs – a plunger, toilet brush, sponges, tile scrubbers, etc… The original pail got replaced about a decade ago. The toilet brush has been replaced several times over. But the little plunger, which got minor play, has been with us since we moved in 28 years ago. Finally, the rubber cracked – probably in disuse and caused by the extreme changes in temperatures and humidity in the room.

Mom went to replace it this week and because it was one of those hot as heck days under an unforgiving sun, she ducked into the new 99-cent store and asked if they had plungers.

The young man was trying to be helpful, a relatively new arrival from China, he told her he did not know the word – and I am sure he expected her to just explain in Mandarin, but we are not that kind of Chinese. No one has spoken the old language in our gene pool for well over 100 years. Sometimes this is a confusing and visible disappointment to our neighbors who could swear we are one of them (we are, just partly).

So there was my mother and this poor young man making what must have looked like disturbingly hilarious gestures as she tried to explain and he tried to gather her meaning… And I giggled as she told me of her misadventure, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in the back of my mind, and that ridiculous scene in “Hush” when Giles was making his presentation on The Gentlemen and then Buffy . . .

well, you know. (If you don't, it'll become clear around the :08 mark.)

The point is, we have a new plunger, and it is entirely possible that Mom may have now a reputation as well.