When I came to Olympia for college I found a place off campus to rent with several of my compatriots. It was a decrepit old house, but very cheap. I think that when we split the rent five ways we ended up each paying $15 a month. For that modest amount we received a house of woe. There were problems with the wiring (knob and tube, with old-style fuses that frequently blew), the water supply (is that tea-colored, or coffee-colored?), drafty doors and  windows, and a coal-fired furnace that needed stoking twice a day and that had to have its clinkers removed every week.  

We eventually came to accept that these were things we just had to adjust to, learn to ignore, or somehow deal with. These were the multiple flies in the ointment we now called “home.” We named it the “Orange Community Sucker,” OCS for short. I think that was an oblique reference to the counterculture utopian aspiration we called the “Overall Cooperative Structure.” 

The one plague of that old house that we hadn’t really come to grips with, even into the second year of your residency, was the toilet. The toilet had an impressive repertoire of ways to disturb our sanity. It would run all night regardless of how you wiggled the handle, and then, randomly, would stop running all together. Of course it would clog at the most inconvenient times. It seemed to have an intuition about the gastrointestinal state of our little community. When someone had “the runs” or was in dire need to “make a call to Ralph on the porcelain telephone,” the toilet would refuse to flush. Or when it finally did respond to the lever, it would overflow. Then someone would have to get on their hands and knees in the slop and turn off the water valve. 

We had accumulated an impressive set of tools and devices that claimed to solve all toilet-related issues: snakes of various lengths and diameters; plungers of different shapes and colors; replacement flapper valves and floats; liquid and powdered clog removers. At one point we even tried burning incense on the lid to appease the toilet’s troubled spirit. Nothing we tried was successful long-term.

What typically happened was that some new crisis would arise, and would be attacked with some new strategy or tool. A clog would eventually be displaced, and everything would be perfect for a few days, or even weeks. But soon a new problem would arise. It was as if the toilet had become bored with the routine and needed some new excitement. One of the residents, who had been studying about mental health issues at Evergreen, suggested that the toilet might be bipolar or have Borderline Personality Disorder. Should we try flushing some Adderall or Lithium or some other medication? But who would be willing to flush down perfectly good drugs on such a sketchy theory?

I remember one particular incident. We had organised a “harvest festival” in October for a couple of years running. This might have been the second or third annual celebration. We thought of it as an alternative to the traditional Thanksgiving. We set the date halfway between Canadian Thanksgiving and American Thanksgiving. It was all about food and friends, but instead of the sacrificial turkey, our focus was on super local foods: salmon, oysters, and clams. There were many kinds of pies, savory and sweet, made with copious homegrown and wild-gathered mushrooms and veggies, including five kinds of squash. 

We called this gathering “Thanks-But-No-Thanks-Giving,” expressing our disdain for the commercialized celebration of European conquest. We had invited friends from near and far and our refrigerators were filling up with amazing and exotic delights.

On the day before the big dinner the toilet had started gurgling—a sure sign of an impending breakdown. With all the out-of-town guests we had invited for the party, and while the final pies were in the oven, we had time on our hands and some extra brain power. We passed a pipe around and then entertained our visitors with a discussion of all the things in the house that needed some TLC. 

“Volunteers?” someone asked. 

One of the visitors decided to take on the toilet project. She turned off the water and removed all the mechanical parts from inside the tank. As she was cleaning them she called out, “Hey everybody, look what I found.”  We all crowded around in the cramped bathroom to look into the open tank. “Can you read what this says?” she asked. Stamped into the inside of the tank was a date: 10-30-1940. 

Someone said, “This is crazy. This toilet is having a birthday—like, tomorrow!”

Someone else said, “Well, not a birthday. Obviously, toilets don’t have birthdays, but they could have anniversaries, right? If they have those, they would also have astrological signs. Like, it could have been born under a bad sign.”

“So, what is this one’s astrological sign?’

“Dude! What was in that pipe we were just smokin’?”

“No, I really want to know. We could try to do its chart.”

One of the housemates, a librarian, went to the bookshelf in the living room and came back with The Idiot’s Guide to Astrology, and said, ”According to this, October 30 means it’s a Scorpio.”

“Wow! That explains so much!” one of the visitors said with a smirk.

“No, just think about it. Do you remember last year, at this exact time, how we had the first really bad plumbing disaster?” said another of the housemates. “And think about how it always seemed to stop working at exactly the worst possible time.”

“So what are Scorpios supposed to be like?”

The librarian read: Scorpios are known to have very strong powers of intuition and to be highly emotional and vindictive. “It’s a water sign. Right? That makes sense. Changeable and moody. Associated with certain unsavory bodily functions.”

“And talk about emotions! You know how it makes that sad moaning sound when it’s especially unhappy.”

“Like the time we flushed the week-old oyster stew?”

“Well, this is all great information, but can this help us avoid another October toilet break-down.” 

“Well,” said the librarian, “It sounds like the root of this situation might be a compatibility problem. This book has lots of advice about what signs are compatible for intimate relationships. Look at this chart. An ideal soulmate for a Scorpio would be a Pisces. Another water sign, and with a soothing mellow vibe that could balance the venom of the Scorpion’s sting.”  

“Oooo, how poetic. But do toilets even have intimate relationships?” questioned the skeptic. 

“Of course. Just think of the watery interaction of a toilet and a plunger. What could be more intimate than that? We know from long experience that some combinations work better than others.”

“So, let me get this straight,” said the skeptic. “We might be able to improve life for all of us, including our porcelain friend Mr. T, by getting the right plunger, one that is a Pisces?”

“Wow, what a concept!”

“And, how would we find such a thing? At the cosmic hardware store?” said the skeptic.   

“Well, we already have a large collection of plungers here in the closet. It might just be a matter of picking the right one.”

“Can the Idiot’s Guide give us any hints?”

The librarian said, “How about color? It looks like the most simpatico color for Pisces is green. And look. We just happen to have a green plunger, still in its original packaging. I suggest that we put this plunger right . . . down . . . in . . . here, slosh it around a bit, turn off the light, vacate the room, close the door, and let these two get to know each other. With any luck, when we get done with our fabulous meal this Scorpio here will be ready to ROCK AND ROLL!”

Just as a collective groan rose up from the assembled multitude someone rang the dinner bell.