Don't Be Alarmed

Don't be alarmed, but there is something hanging from the inside lip of the toilet bowl that looks and moves and seems like a tail.

I know, I know!  That tiny space where water flows down the bowl isn't big enough for a thing with a tail that size, but I'm telling you, it looks like a tail.

It all started in the middle of the night, as all good stories do.  I got up to use the facilities and as I flushed, the handle let go of the inner workings of the tank, and flopped around uselessly.  Now this is a situation I know a little something about.  I've taken the lid off and hooked the arm back to the thingy so many times, I can do it half asleep, but when I took the lid off this time, there was no hook, no inner thingy with holes.   I did the next best thing at 3 in the morning.  I found a shoe lace in the junk drawer and tied one end to the flapper and dangled the other end outside the tank.  Whenever a flush is in order, pull the string up, the flapper pulls up, the toilet flushes, let the string resume its resting place outside of the tank.

My husband fixed it for reals when he got up at 5.

But when I got home from work that night, there was the tail, wiggling and wagging, hanging in the toilet bowl.  I told my husband something was not right.  I said it was broken or something.

I didn't want to say it's a tail.

I didn't have to.  My husband's first response was a startled one: it's a tail!  Then he realized it wasn't a tail.  Just part of the inner thingy that had worked it's way out of the tank, on a Saving Nemo type journey.

Now I know it wasn't a tail.  I know it for a fact.  That does not ease my concerns every time I look at the toilet.  It feels like it could have a tail in it for real, and whatever creature said tail would be attached too probably wants to bite!