A few days ago, the apartment complex shut off the water to my apartment in order to do some repairs. By the time I returned to my apartment that night, the pipes had all been fixed and the water was running normally. However, at about midnight I flushed the toilet again and a large pocket of air made a break for it through my commode. There was a sudden roaring noise followed by what I can only describe as what I’d always thought a toilet vomiting might sound like. The air burst into the water tank, made a small chugging noise, then – nothing.
By this time, of course, I was bravely cowering on the other side of the room in desperate hope that my toilet was not about to explode. Once I realized that the danger – such as it was – had passed and there was nothing to worry about, it occurred to me that I had read entirely too much Dave Barry as a child, and this fact was now coming around to bite me. There is only so many times you can be linked to articles like this during your formative years without that making a strong impression on you, and now I seem to suffer from some permanent repressed fear of toilet combustion. This might be the sort of thing that leads me to humiliate myself as I hurl myself to safety behind the hand dryers in some public restroom.
On the other hand, this just might be the sort of caution that saves my life.