Beware the Yellow Rain

No, this wasn't the subject line of a spam e-mail that I received that proceeded to ask me to sign all of my wordly assets to a wrongly imprisoned Prince of Nambia. Nor was it a harbinger found in a cookie that came with my General Gau's Chicken with boneless spare ribs and lo mein.

Though it probably should have been.

Let me take you through my Saturday morning.

I was in the shower.

Relax, I'm not going THERE.

So, I was in the shower and I was...

...singing. Awesomely, as I am wont to do when I am showering.

Xteen bursts in the bathroom, mid-aria, and yells, "Dim!"

She does this often. What usually follows is: "You are singing awesomely!"

Only this time, she proclaimed something slightly more troubling:

"There's a leak!"

I think to myself, "I mustn't have closed the shower curtain completely and there are drips of water on the floor. That must be it."

Having just completed rinsing my mane of its Pantene 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner (a wonderful invention...must like the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, only not as chocolately. Or peanut buttery), I part the curtain to reveal something that took approximately 2.8 seconds for my brain to process.

Water was pouring down in sheets from the air conditioning vent and the ceiling fan (which, as luck would have it, was ON and running on electricity...now, I'm no Ben Franklin, but I seem to recall water and electricity getting along about as well as Tom Cruise and "reality"). This scenario made Xteen's proclamation of a "leak" about as accurate as saying Angelina Jolie has screwed "a couple of guys".

"Hmmm", I say to myself, as I calmly exit the shower and attempt to sop up the still downpouring water with any available towel in an effort as feeble as the captain of the Titanic bailing out with a Dixie cup.

We locate a bucket and put it under the electric fan, still spewing its aquatic nemesis, since that is the orifice in the ceiling that is "leaking" with the most ferocity.

Xteen hypothesizes that it is something that we did. I'm on board with that for a minute, because firstly, our drains have been going down real slow lately and secondly, if something is fucked up in the apartment, it's usually on account of something we did.

But then I started to think about it more. Now, I'm no Isaac Newton, but I'm reasonably sure that unless you have a poltergeist or maybe a magician in the house, water usually doesn't run from the ground up. Now, I can do that trick where I make it look like half of my finger's missing, when in actuality, it is just the thumb on my other hand, but I can't make two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen defy gravity. Yet.

So, then, we figure one of the pipes burst, which would explain the problem we've been having with the drains.

Xteen decides to call the complex's maintenance department, which has an answering service that considers anything short of a gas explosion a non-emergency. Last summer, we discovered a lot of black mold in one of our closets that was (obviously) the result of a water leak in the place. Guess what? Not an emergency. A few years ago, they installed a new air conditioning unit that goes through my closet and comes out to the outside of the building. They didn't seal it up and we had a tropical storm. So, I am standing in front of my bureau, which is near the closet and the soles of my feet are wet. In fact, half the rug in the bedroom is sopping from the rain. You guessed it...not an emergency.

So, there I am, half-naked (dream away, readers, dream away), holding a bucket below an electric fan that is vomiting water and Xteen gets someone on the phone and tells them our situation. Xteen must have used the ol' Jedi mind trick, because Lily Tomlin on the other line decided that having water explode out of places from which water should never come is, in fact, an emergency.

While I got dressed (again, dream away...), Xteen decided to go visit the upstairs neighbor to see if he was having any trouble with his water.

Xteen returns with a terrifying report:

The guy upstairs...his toilet overflowed.

He assured her that it was "clean" water.

To the best of my knowledge, my upstairs neighbor is not Ed Norton (the sewer worker from the Honeymooners, not the dude from Fight Club. Actually, he's neither. Nevermind). So, I'm not sure how he can confidently tell me that water is clean. You could take a hermetically sealed bottle of Perrier and pour it in your can. Guess what...it's fucking toilet water.

Finally, the deluge abates, after what seemed like forty days and forty nights. Upstairs neighbor apologizes profusely and promises to call maintenance RIGHT NOW to fix his loo because he is having a party that night and doesn't want any toilet trouble. This works out well too, because I am not particularly in the mood to be trimming my soon-to-be handlebar mustache only to be unceremoniously baptized by some stranger's piss. So, this toilet-fixing idea is most definitely a win/win.

Finally, the on-call maintenance guy calls us. I answer the phone:

"Hello?"

"Yeah, this is Cement Head with maintenance."

"Umm, yeah, hi...we have a little bit of a problem. We have water pouring out of our air conditioning vent and the ELECTRIC fan in the ceiling. Our neighbor said his toilet overflowed. In fact, the cracks in the wall in the bathroom and doorjam are bleeding water as well. Can someone come out here?"

(A pause ensues that would imply that I asked Cement Head to tell me how many toes he had without taking off his shoes)

"I can't do anything about that now. That's going to have to wait until Monday. If the water stopped, the upstairs guy has it under control."

"OK, hold on. So, a Niagra Falls-esque cascade of piss water flooding my bathroom floor, from the ceiling, I might add, is not an emergency?!?"

(Long pause, as if he suddenly remembered he didn't count his pinky toes)

"Right."

"Well, what about the electric fan which is ON, by the way and currently has toilet water spewing from it??"

"If you are uncomfortable with the electricity being on, just don't touch anything until it dries."

"OK. Sounds good. Hey, just out of curiosity, is it normal to have septic agua raining out of the ceiling when a toilet overflows?"

"It happens all the time."

"Boy, have I lived a sheltered life. Thanks Cement Head!"

(click)

So, Xteen and I continue with our Saturday, which unexpectedly now included drying our flooded bathroom and washing towels, not to mention quizzically pacing throughout the place trying to rationalize how this wasn't an emergency and worrying when I could touch the light switch without fearing that I'd end up with a hair style like Don King's.

Finally, Xteen and I settle in to do what we had planned: wrap Christmas gifts. Fun.

There's a knock on the door.

It's the upstairs neighbor. He asks if he can do anything to help us.

I say, "Yeah. Use more of this."

So, if you hear on the news of someone who went into a murderous rampage because his upstairs neighbor's loaf fell on his head while he was brushing his teeth...you'll know it's me. And that son of a bitch upstairs needs a bran muffin.

Still not convinced that opening an umbrella inside is bad luck,

- Dim.