Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Backwash

Bathtime is funtime at Chez Zaqui.  Even before we traveled to pick him up, our reports from the agency told us how he enjoyed his baths, how he’d stretch his naked tininess, cooing with pleasure.  Even on those occasions when he lodges an initial protest against tubbal immersion, it’s almost always pro forma - he cries to do a little crying, but given the chance to toss some toys into the transparency of the bathwater, tears turn quickly to laughter.  I’ve even taught him to lie back in the water, floating (with support from me) so his shampooed hair spreads across the surface like wispy feathers, dispersing a halo of foamy white suds as he closes his eyes, his small body so relaxed, smiling and sighing.  The biggest struggle is usually getting him to leave the tub after it’s been drained dry. 

Draining the tub is another matter - one that is at the focus of my considerations today.  Z likes to pull the bathtub plug - insists on doing it, really.  I give him a few warnings about the impending expiration of bathtime - five minutes, two minutes, one minute, and a countdown for the last fifteen seconds.  As I reach “zero hour” he rushes the front of the tub, giggling and eager, scrabbling with vermicular water-softened fingers to wrest the stopper from the metal collar of the drain.  Then he plays with the outflowing water, sticks xylophone mallets into the drain plug and sings “happy birthday” to the upraised ends as if they were candles, and tests the effect of putting different things over the opening - a cup, a hand, an asscheek - enjoying the slow changes in his liquid environment. 

Yes, slow changes.  The ol’ bubbletubby is not what anyone would call a fast drainer.  It would be more accurate, perhaps, to call it “faster than evaporation” (the new name for my as-yet-unrecorded emo album).  Z enjoys this phase of his bath, but it does feel draining to me in a distinctly non-hydrostatic way.  What I’m getting at is that it’s boring to wait for the tub to drain so painfully slowly.  It makes me feel worn out and tired.  Also, I’m none too impressed by the anemic whirlpool produced - eventually - by this incremental process.  Z likes the whirlpool and I just wish it were more vigorous, both for his entertainment and for my convenience.  Yet all my wishing along such lines has proven ineffectual.  Its not a job for wishing. It’s a job for dangerous caustics, and I know where to get them. 

For, as you might have guessed, I’ve taken steps to ameliorate the unsatisfactory drainage situation: I went and got the biggest, baddest, blackest bottle of drain declogger available at my local omnimart.  It’s a hard-core product with two liquids in separate, adjacent sections of a single container, to be poured simultaneously down offending outflow orifi, resulting in an interaction with unparalleled schmutz-dissolving powers.  According to the ever-trustworthy technical copy on the label, it clears out anything but plutonium (which it nonetheless will polish to a sparkling luster).  It’s the top of the line in terms of drain-clearing technology available to the general public without a license, an electro-rooter, and special plumber’s pants. 

So: after Zebo’s bath one recent evening, I uncorked my magical vial(s) of chemical intensity, poured them simultaneously down the balky drain, and let it sit there overnight.  I dreamed, in the interim, of downspouts and MSs found in bottles and other hydrocyclonic phenomena. I was primed for big results.  I believed, dammit - I really believed. 

My shower the next morning didn’t fill the tub enough to reveal the efficacy of my efforts. That evening, pursuant to well-established policy, Kel and I traded jobs: she gave Z his bath and I read him to sleep.  I didn’t ask her to check the degree of drainal improvement; I wanted to see it for myself.  Later that night, K took a shower and the next morning I took another.  By this point that drain should have been quite thoroughly water-reamed.  That night, then, as I drew Z’s bath, I eagerly anticipated a nice fast hydroevacuation process when we pulled the drainplug, to the cheerful accompaniment of the unquenchable gurgling of a vigorous and substantial whirlpool.  Looking back, that was probably my big mistake: having expectations. 

Soon enough my little monkey was clean and had sufficiently frolicked in the warmth of the bathtub.  I gave the countdown and at zero he scrambled forward to yank the plug.  I held my breath.

Shortly thereafter I resumed normal respiration.  I could see that water was flowing out - the level was dropping, but not remotely as quickly as I’d anticipated. Z didn’t care, he played as he always does, but I was confused.  I’d cleaned the drain, hadn’t I?  Was it actually going slower than it had before?

After several minutes trickled past I was pretty sure of two things: it was slower, yes; also, by now I’d usually be seeing a whirlpool into the drain but this time I was seeing only smooth, featureless water, its surface untroubled by any evidence of cyclonic activity.  I figured that it would show up eventually, and that’s what happened at pretty much the last possible moment: as the final few quarts of dihydrogen oxide slid through the steel ring into the SF sewerage system, a wide oculus opened briefly in the water, a sudden yawn, a slurping gurgle, and then Zach was crawling around in an empty tub, grinning and delighted and still playing with his toys. 

I, on the other hand, was a little frustrated.  My plan had… what’s the equivalent of “backfire” for a bathtub?  The word that keeps floating through my mind is “backwash,” but it feels a little unsanitary.  Regardless, it’s probably accurate. 

Sorry, Zach.  I backwashed your whirlpool.  I’ll have to make it up to you.  In the meantime, it’s just your hard luck that bathtime doesn’t suck quite the way it’s supposed to.