Saturday evening, March 9, I attended a lovely launch event for Forty Press. The party was held at a just as
lovely bookstore in Wayzata, Minnesota, called the Bookcase. The place was packed, and at one point
I decided to use the restroom, which is located in the back of the
store. When I stepped inside, I immediately noticed that the handle for the
toilet was lying on the back of the tank, and the toilet itself had suffered
from many non-flushes in a row. Now this is absolutely no reflection on the
bookstore. These things happen, and I imagine the handle experienced a lot of
use that evening. It just gave out. So I rolled up my sleeves, removed the lid
from the tank, reached in, and manually flushed.
I regret being unable to repair the toilet, but I think it
will require a whole new handle.
But anyhow…
Now I can't quit thinking about something that used to
happen at my uncle's bar in Illinois.
A guy walks
into a bar… Goes straight to the men's room. Comes out. Orders a beer. Drinks
it fairly quickly. Leaves. No tip. Very little conversation. Next person to go
into the men's room comes out and says: "The toilet seat is broken."
That's not the end of the story.
Over a period of a year, the guy returned several
times. And every time he returned,
he broke the toilet seat. My uncle began relating this story to other bar
owners in the area. They knew the guy, and he did the same thing at their
bars. Toilet Seat (as we began
calling him) wasn't a big guy, so the consensus was that the breaking of the
seat was some kind of deliberate and weird fetish. I'd completely forgotten about Toilet Seat until the
other night.
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