Toilet trouble

Warning: Potty humor ahead – literally!

There was a time in our household when I could blame at least one of our three daughters for any (almost daily) home toilet debacles. Usually, I could address these issues with a plunger, a screwdriver, a hazmat suit, or a combination of the three.

Recently, though, the problem took a more sinister and mysterious turn when the commode in our master bathroom stopped flushing altogether. After some frantic, fruitless handle-jiggling, which pretty much exhausted my plumbing expertise, I naturally blamed my wife.

Those who know me well realize that I’m about as handy as an extra belly button. When something goes wrong at the house, my go-to tool is my cell phone. However, this particular mishap occurred at the convenient hour of around midnight, so I thought I had better act fast or risk lying in bed and fitfully dreaming about dirty bathrooms, toilet paper shortages, and catastrophic flooding.

My first step was to deadlift the toilet tank cover and stare down into what looks to me like a porcelain aquarium full of partially submerged car parts. Besides wondering which of these parts might cause an explosion at our local wastewater treatment plant if I touched it, I noticed a tiny wallet chain curled up in the bottom of the tank.

Thanks to AI, which I finally found useful for something other than showing me what I’d look like without love handles, I discovered that the chain should be connected to both the handle arm thingy and the hilariously named “flapper.”

Although the toilet tank sits at the perfect height to destroy my lumbar spine when I bend over to snorkel in it, I dove right in and managed to reconnect one end of the chain to the handle arm thingy. Unfortunately, someone (my wife, no doubt) had flushed the commode so rigorously that the connection tab on the flapper had completely broken off and was probably on its way out to sea.

Luckily, AI saved the day again and suggested that I rig the chain to what was left of the flapper using a paperclip. I have no idea how I did it in my semiconscious delirium, but somehow, it worked. (I had to resist performing a celebratory cannonball getting back into bed.)

You’ve probably guessed by now that my skillful repair job lasted for about 2 flushes, and I wound up needing to replace the flapper altogether, which meant visiting Lowe’s Home Improvement That Requires At Least 2 Trips Center the next day. They really should have a large sign at the exit that reads, “See you again in half an hour.”

The first flapper I purchased proudly declared that it was “UNIVERSAL” in large, obnoxious lettering on the package. I soon discovered, though, that my much larger flapper is from a different universe and must have been designed for king-sized flushing (it knows us well).

After my second trip to Lowe’s, I removed my disfigured flapper, gave it a proper burial, and installed an “ultra, high-performance” flapper designed to withstand even the most robust of wife flushes. Once I had conducted several reasonably athletic practice flushes with my new flapper, I stood back with pride and thought, “I wonder if AI can show me what I’d look like with an extra belly button.”

Copyright 2026 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graves is an award-winning humor columnist from East Texas. His columns have been featured in Texas Escapes magazine, The Shreveport Times, The Longview News Journal, and The Kilgore News Herald. Contact Graves at susanjase@sbcglobal.net.