Saturday, April 18, 2009

What Harm Can 13 Legos Do?



You may not want to know the answer to that question. Consider that your warning.
Legos- those simple little toys that keep my children busy for hours. As I watch them play, I can convince myself I am raising both unique creative expressionists and genius structural engineers. Until a few months ago, I never understood the dark, evil side to Legos.
If you remember, I mentioned then some trouble I was having with our bathrooms, partly due to the main bathroom not flushing correctly. We couldn't figure out what was wrong: the plunger would eventually get it down, when we snaked it the auger seemed to meet a little resistance and then go through, but left on its own it just wouldn't flush down. Oh, what could be the problem?
Never the procrastinators, we trained the kids (sort of) to use other toilets and did our best to ignore that bathroom for a couple months. When Peter's parents flew out to visit, his dad gave us a stern look and took matters into his own hands. He removed the toilet and flipped it on its side. After a long while finagling, we could finally see what was stuck in the U-turn of the toilet. Guess what was lodged there all that time? Yep. Legos. And they weren't coming out.
So we snaked the auger from above while trying to chopstick them out underneath. When they came down low enough, I got a chisel and hammer. I was the one to actually get the 1st pieces separated. Once apart, they fell out easily enough. If only there had been one set. There were three different statues flushed down that toilet. The process reminded me (a little uncomfortably) of giving birth. To triplets. Only without the screaming and with a chisel.
All finished, 13 Legos exited that toilet. My brother-in-law, who happened to be in town and was coerced into assisting my father-in-law with the whole operation, offered to grab the camera for a picture. Think about where those Legos had been for weeks. Think about the multiple bumps and indentations a Lego contains. Now thank me that I declined the offer.

11 comments:

  1. Okay, I consider myself warned. The 1-yr-old has just started to take an interest in the toilet, and the magic of things disappearing with each flush, just as the 3-yr-old has mastered flushing. If I don't go out first thing tomorrow morning and buy toilet locks, I have no one to blame but myself.

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  2. Oh my goodness. That is just so...unpleasant. My kids have been good so far, knock on wood, and have not really shown interest in flushing things down the toilet. At least that I am aware of...

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  3. ha ha ha ha!! ya gotta love kids. that is hilarious!!

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  4. I have to admit, I counted the legos in the picture to make sure there were the right number, OCD me. Glad you figured it out!! That makes one more toilet to use and one more toilet to clean.....hooray, no...boo...no hooray...no ah, you pick.

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  5. I honestly don't know what to say, congrats for figuring it out (I guess).
    I am glad my 18 month old can't open the bathrooms doors and my 4 yr old is trained to shut the door when he is done.

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  6. ewwwww! You are a master at making the disgusting, funny. Also, I recommend using fireworks to clear toilets of toys.

    just sayin...

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  7. I was there and I it was quite the experience. It was nice to have the working toilet though.

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  8. That doesn't sound it was a very pleasant experience but at least the toilet is working and the labor to fix it was free

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  9. Huh. I'm speechless. Way to paint a vivid picture without too many gory details.

    Last year everyone in my neighborhood (several hundred homes) got a letter from the city saying the sewage pumping station that services our area was clogged by a disposable diaper...and some other stuff that then added to the blockage. HOW did anyone flush a diaper down?! I would love to have a toilet that powerful.

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  10. I am amazed no one else has had similar problems before. This is the 3rd time we've had to take off the toilet to reach the blockage. The 1st was a bar of soap, the 2nd was a rubber duck bath toy.

    My 2nd son's one and only accident ever was from visiting a home with a toilet lock and it kind of scared me off of them. He was the culprit of the 1st 2 bathroom adventures, too.

    I can tell you with 100% accuracy that I have never owned a toilet that could flush a disposable diaper. That would be a powerful toilet!

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  11. We haven't had Legos go down the toilet, but we have had them go down the bathtub drain. More than once. Small Legos are now banned from the bathroom!

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