How to flood a bathroom

• you could make it rain for forty days and forty nights. (sort of time consuming, really)
• stop up all the sinks, and turn the taps on full blast. (sort of apparent to anyone who happens to walk by, so not too advisable)
• pull a fire alarm (REALLY not a good idea, unless you are into police investigations..)
• and then there's the method I used back in the second grade:
  1. lift the lid on the tank of the toilet
  2. wet a piece of toilet paper (double ply, preferably), and place it over the overflow pipe
  3. unscrew the float from the rod that controls the flow valve. (or, for a delayed effect, screw the float more tightly, so that the flow slows, but doesn't shut off)
  4. put the lid back on the tank of the toilet
  5. get out!
  (wet toilet paper is quite amazingly watertight, I have found...) For some reason, when I used to do this at school, it didn't occur to me that I was actually causing the bathroom to flood when I did this; you're kind of dumb like that, in second grade... anyway, I never did get caught, although the principle came around to all the classrooms and said something like, "if you know who's doing this, please tell them to stop." (Mr. Upper, if you are reading this, "sorry!")

confession is good for the soul....

Why? I have no idea whatsoever. It was one of those spur-of-the-moment things. I actually loved the library, and I spent quite a bit of my time in there reading college-level astronomy textbooks. Yes, I was an advanced reader for my age, but I was still a stupid little kid.

At the end of school on a Friday, I plopped a wad of paper towels in the sink that was next to the librarian's desk. I then turned on the water and left. About five minutes later, I had completely forgotten about it, and was playing soccer with my friends.

On Monday, I was pulled out of class to see the principal. Sitting in his office was my very pissed-off mother and her alcoholic boyfriend. They knew it was me, and I didn't deny it. I kept answering them with the shrug and the "I don't know." I know how that routine pisses me off when my kids use it on me, so I suspect I was lucky to survive to my next birthday.

I had flooded the library up to the bottom inch of the lower shelves of books. I killed a forest worth of books, about 4,000. They had to repair the shelves, the floor and the roof below. My family was rather poor, and couldn't foot the $85,000⁰⁰ bill. This was in the very early 1970's, mind you, when money was worth more. Luckily the insurance covered it. I went to a psychologist for two years to find out why I did it.

To this day I couldn't say why. Books are a large part of my life. Perhaps my writing and reading is my personal penance for my stupid act of destruction.