My niece was visiting one day last week. She is six, and I am her favorite non-parent adult relative. This is not a boast, just a statement of fact that her uncles, her grandparents, and her cousins would all confirm. If six-year-olds had the vote, I would be an unstoppable political force in the United States.
Anyway, she and I were writing stories, which is what we do. She comes up with story ideas, I write the words, and we assemble and distribute our books to the reading public. We were in the middle of a page when my niece whispered to me that she had to go to the bathroom.
"Go ahead, " I said. "I'll wait." I mean, we were working, but even highly prolific children's book authors on deadline need occasional breaks.
A moment later, I noticed that she was still standing behind me, waiting for me to notice her. "Everything OK?" I asked. She hasn't wanted help in the bathroom for a long time, but she obviously needed something.
She looked to her left and right, and then she leaned in. "I'm afraid to flush," she whispered.
I kept a straight face. This, by the way, is why little kids love me. I take them seriously.
“You’re afraid to flush?” I asked her. “Why?”
Eyes left and right again, like Mike Ehrmentraut at a dead drop collecting a brown bag full of cash: “What if it comes UP, instead of going DOWN?” “Up” and “down” were accompanied by hand gestures.
I thought for a moment. “That is a valid concern,” I said. “Tell you what: you go and do what you need to do, and then tell me when you’re ready to flush. We’ll do that part together.”
She nodded, skipped off to the bathroom (that is how six-year-old girls get around; they skip) and called me when it was time to flush.
“OK,” I said. “Here’s what you’re going to do. Stand here.” I pointed to a spot just barely within arm’s reach of the toilet. “Reach over and flush, and then hop back really quick. I promise you that it’s going down and not up, but just in case it DOES come up, you’ll be ready, and it won’t get you.” She nodded, obviously satisfied with this solution. She leaned over, flushed, and hopped backward. As expected, the contents of the toilet went down and not up. We washed our hands, resumed writing, and produced our best work yet, a story about a little girl who really doesn’t want a haircut but then finally yields to parental pressure and submits to the scissors, and is really happy with the result. A bit of a roman a clef, if we’re being honest here. We can’t make EVERYTHING up.
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My niece is actually not related to me by blood. She is my husband’s sister’s child. So in the debate about nature vs. nurture, the latter would have to prevail in any analysis of this child’s very strong resemblance to me, psychologically speaking. She is introverted but not afraid of people (though she used to be quite afraid of anyone she didn’t know well). She is a reader and writer. She’s very funny, though often unintentionally so. She loves swimming, shopping, and chocolate. And she has more quirky fears and anxieties than the psychiatric profession can shake a stick at. “What if it comes UP instead of going DOWN?” That is next level, as they say on the Twitter.
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I mean, what if it DOES come up instead of going down? Then what?
*****
I meant to ask my sister-in-law if they had had some horrifying plumbing disaster or if my niece had possibly seen or heard something that would make her think that a toilet might expel rather than swallow its contents, but I forgot. But maybe she conceived of the idea on her own. She is very imaginative, and very prone toward anxiety, much like her aunt. I imagine horrifying situations all the time, and then I worry about them until they might just as well be happening.
What was that? You’re so glad you’re not me? Yeah, you have no idea. NO. IDEA. Sigh.
*****
But even with my noted propensity to worst-case-scenario my way through every day of my life, I have never worried about a toilet flushing in reverse. Knowing me, though, this just begs the question: Why not? How could I have overlooked this possibility? How could I NOT have worried about this? After all, this is an old house and our kitchen sink has been known to back up, forcing my husband to snake the pipes with a very expensive machine that he bought for the purpose (money well spent, BTW - I can think of three separate times in the last ten years when without that machine, we’d have been at the mercy of the plumbing-industrial complex). What’s to stop the toilets from backing up or worse? Nothing, that’s what. Here I am spending 25 hours a day every day worrying about things that range from utterly impossible to very unlikely, and I failed to even consider the very real possibility of an ejection toilet.
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And really, given the documented instances of snakes and alligators in toilets, upward flushing doesn’t even seem like the worst thing that could happen vis-a-vis toilets. So much to worry about. SO MUCH TO WORRY ABOUT.
*****
My niece goes to school every day, and she goes to dance class and Girl Scouts and swim practice, and I know that she is frequently anxious and sometimes even scared. Sometimes she needs a pep talk. Sometimes she needs a friend to come along for the ride. But she overcomes the fear and she does what she needs to do. I wish I could tell her that when she grows up, she won’t get scared anymore, but it doesn’t always work that way. I don’t even know if overcoming the fear makes you ultimately stronger. I do it all the time and I don’t know that I’m all that strong, but maybe I’m stronger than I would be if I gave in and stayed home in bed every time I worried about impending doom or disaster, which would mean that I’d never get out of bed.
I wish I wasn’t like this, and I won’t even pretend that I don’t. I’d much rather be a bold, fearless, adventurous person. But I’m not. I’m not a badass. I was born to be mild. It’s too soon to say what my niece will be like when she’s older. She’s only six, after all. But I see a lot of myself in her, and when she gets older, she might also wish that she was different.
But we do what we have to do. We speak at the meeting, or or we drive to fucking Tyson’s Corner in rush hour Beltway traffic, or we flush that toilet. We show that toilet who’s boss, I tell you what. So I’m giving us credit; not for bravery, but for getting over it and pretending we’re OK even when we’re not and for showing up every gosh darn day. There’s a lot to be said for showing up.
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