| I. ..Have... Flung...The... Bag... Over... The... Drainhole! I quickly (yet paradoxically, too slowly) yank the bag away from the drain as though I were a magician and the bag were a tablecloth. (Continuing the simile, the urine would be an elaborate banquet of squab, quiche, and a chicken broth based consomme, all elegantly lit by a candelabra that can only be described as �tastefully overwrought�.) Dear reader, as you find me standing in my now urine soaked shoes (diluted urine, but still...) watching the bag o' urine run, efficiently albeit belatedly, down the drain until it is little more than a pungent memory, consider thus...It is still a summer morn. People are still rising to greet it. Often they are showering to ready themselves to partake in all that this summer morn promises them. More to the point, there are people on the three floors above where I stand (in my now urine soaked shoes)(diluted urine, but still...) who are immersed in this afore-mentioned ritual. The proof of such activity is found in the small Niagra Falls pouring out of the urinal seemingly unabated the entire time I was wrestling with the 30 gallon bag o� urine (diluted urine, but still...) I begin the wet vac. I will eventually vacuum all the urine off of the floor and be able to stick the nozzle into the urinal proper to suck it up at the source, but I do not know this yet. At this point, I am vacuuming up 10-15 gallons at a time and then dismantling the wet-vac so as to dump the paltry but manageable amount down a toilet. I then put the contraption back together (is this considered �mantling� it?) and continue about my Sisyphus-esque task: suck, dismantle, dump, mantle, suck, dismantle, dump, mantle...ad nauseam. It is during this period that it occurs to me that this would be so many people�s last day as a janitor. But I have never felt more alive and in control of all I survey! Have you ever had one of those days where you knew that things could only get better? That is how I felt, and I said as much to the people who were coming in to shower as I was vacuuming up the urine around their be-sandaled feet. Oh, I hadn�t told you? Yeah, people were wading through urine to use the shower this entire while. Rhetorical question: just how much must one feel the need to shower, that one would be willing to walk through other people�s urine (diluted urine, but still...) in order to take it!?! As promised in the above paragraph, I am now �sucking it up at the source� with my nozzle nestled within the alabaster abyss of the urinal. (For some reason, I feel compelled to tell you that I am NOT speaking metaphorically.) �Now� is also the time when everyone on all three floors above me decides, en masse, that this would be a very good time indeed to take that shower they feel they need in order to properly partake in all this summer morn is promising them. �Now� is also 9:00 AM, a full hour past the time the plumbers arrive to work. Since there is no way I can possibly keep up with the sudden outpour brought on by everyone showering at once, and since the giggling glissando of the gurgling urinal is beginning to sound like it's laughing at me and my attempt to contain and control its torrent, I leave. I like to think I threw down my ultimately ineffectual nozzle (again, NOT a metaphor) in disgust and flounced off with my golden curly locks bouncing �Nelly Olson-esque�. I�m sure the truth is I just wandered off to call the plumbers again. (It�s very hard to flounce while sporting a buzzcut, one really needs those golden curly locks!) It is then that I was assured that the plumbers were aware of my situation and were most assuredly on their way. In fact, they arrived less than a half hour later, and I was finally able to take my �8 o�clock break�. During which, I did not have chicken noodle soup, and (if i had) I certainly wouldn�t have washed it down with tepid lemonade. After which, I returned to have the plumbers tell me the urinal was plugged because one of the members of the highschool football camp on one of the other floors, had snuck down and pooped in the urinal! So, you decide: Was it some god-like entity that condemned me to my task, or just a little shit? |
| Piss-yphus Cont. still by a.fish |