I had one of those oh no moments two days ago. We have been potty training our boy. He did his part and hopped down to go play. I flushed and nothing happened. I plunged and nothing happened. Then, I looked down at my feet and saw it…water running out of the bottom of the toilet. We knew that we were going to have to call the plumber because water was not draining like it was supposed to, but this was just gross.
So, next day, very little water was used before the plumber got there. I made plans to reinstall the commode and got supplies (needed to be done anyway.) The plumber showed up while I was at work. He did his plumber thing on the sewer clean-out in the back yard. Reread the subject line of the post. Yep. Sticks. My bouncing boy had stuffed a bunch of sticks and rocks down the pipe (with his mother and I unaware of the sticks…I caught him stuffing a couple of rocks, but maybe I didn’t catch him as fast as I thought I did). 100 bucks out the door to Mr. Rooter. And guess what? I am not really all that upset.
Ok. I don’t have spare Benjamins laying around. That part hurts a little. But, I do have the thing in perspective. Trey loves being outside. He loves playing with rocks and dirt and sticks. He is naturally curious. He is a young boy. He put two and two together and watched all that stuff disappear and probably had a blast doing it. It isn’t his fault that he clogged up the sewer line. He was just being curious.
Who is to blame? Me. It is my fault, because I knew the cap for the cleanout had a hole in it. I have walked by that thing hundreds of times and thought to myself, whoa, I hope nothing gets in there. Yeah, I know…dumb. I went to Lowes tonight and got a new cap. I could have saved a hundred bucks for a buck seventy six. Dave Ramsey calls that stupid tax. I paid 100 dollars extra for not taking care of the problem when I first saw it.
I can’t think of all of the times that something unfortunate has happened that I have gotten upset about that I could have prevented all together. I have had more of these times than I would like to admit. I have had things broken that I knew needed attention and could have been fixed. Things disappear that I should have put up in the first place. Had I done what I was supposed to the bad thing would have never had the chance to come around.
So, I choose to laugh at this one. My little teacher is hard at work. Trey has taught me and reminded me about a lot of things in life. Things that I need to get right now and teach back to him as he gets older. This lesson? Fix the hole in the pipe when you first see it and it will prevent issues later.
David Willis 