le mystère de la cuvette sale

I went into the men's room yesterday to sit upon the porcelain throne and think great thoughts, but as occasionally happens, I was faced with the sight of a crime: a big turd splatter sat inside the toilet bowl, looking for all the world like the aftermath of a grenade explosion, and the water level was negligible. This could only mean one thing: the turd had originally been big enough to clog the toilet when it was time to flush. Someone had flushed; the turd had blocked the drainage; the person had freaked as the water level rose; after the person skedaddled, the water had slowly drained down, but because of the blockage, the bowl hadn't been able to fill back up. So: just an exploded turd and a dry toilet bowl.

Admittedly, I've been the cause of this sort of turd-blockage moment myself. Toilets clog all the time in Seoul. And if there's no plunger in the cubicle, there's nothing to do but leave the cubicle and pray that (1) no one sees you leave that cubicle and (2) the next person to enter the stall has the common sense to look down at the toilet before settling his ass cheeks into a startlingly high pool of shitty water. But in yesterday's case, there was a plunger, and this thought sparked the question, Why didn't the person before me use it?

Several theories immediately came to mind. First, if the previous person were an adult, he may simply have freaked and left right away to preserve his dignity. Koreans find all sorts of ways to escape responsibility, which I suppose only makes them human. (But in this culture, it really kills a person to have to accept blame for something, even a little thing, so avoiding blame while saving face has become an art form.) Second, if the previous person were a student (and we have a cram school on our floor, so plenty of kids use the restroom), the kid almost definitely freaked and, not knowing how to use a plunger, simply ran away.

The whole question of being unable to use a plunger (which could be an adult-male problem as well) takes us even deeper down the cultural rabbit hole. Korean sons are, stereotypically, pampered like royalty (lots of "Don't worry, Mom'll do it for you/걱정마, 엄마 해 줄게" during childhood), so it's not until they go through their required military service that they actually start to learn how to do basic things for themselves.* When you think about it, it's quite likely that any Korean guy, student or adult, would have no clue how to use a plunger. Another reason just to leave the scene of the crime.

So since there was a plunger in my stall, I hit the flush lever to refill the bowl with water (it didn't overflow, thank Satan), then proceeded to pump away with the plunger. Ten reps, and I'd done a set of plunger pushes. The water level sank steadily, indicating that I'd broken through the blockage at least partially if not completely. A second flush to confirm victory, and I was finally able to sit down and think my great thoughts.

The more I reflect on it, the more I believe the culprit was a kid. In cases where you work in a building that also has a math or language academy in it, it's almost always the kids who bring these sorts of disasters.

__________

*To be fair, I recall being a college freshman and discovering that a lot of my dorm's fellow occupants—especially the guys—had no common sense about anything, e.g., how to cook, how to iron clothes, how to clean up puke. Many American guys, or so it seemed to me, were also pretty lost without their mothers there to help them. Independence takes work.