Reunion
◊ Speaking of nostalgia, it looks like the water in the main sewer line on our street was nostalgic about halcyon days spent running through the pastoral reaches of my bathroom, because this morning Dean and I did hear a mighty gurgling sound. This was followed by a loud splattering noise, and when we went to investigate we did find that the bathroom had a thin layer of water spattered all over the floor and did very strongly smell of poo.
I found from my dad that the next-door neighbor had encountered similarly sentimental toilet water, meaning the city had to go out and clear the line. It looks like the sewer water had some strange affinity for its past life on my street.
Maybe the water had gotten sloppy drunk and done the water equivalent of driving through its old neighborhood while totally inebriated. It must've been staring wistfully at the faucets it used to sit under with its friends when it cut class, remembering how they'd pass around a bottle of 7-Up spiked with vodka sneaked from its parents' wet bar. It could've been thinking wistfully about that geeky dew it had a crush on but couldn't get up the guts to talk to. It might've been remembering all the time it spent locked in its bedroom listening to music or driving around with its friends in hand-me-down sedans with the radio cranked up so loud that everyone had to yell over it to be heard.
Maybe it was thinking about a time when all it wished for was all the tattoos it could get and a place of its own and somewater to love and endless shows at grimy little clubs.
Maybe if the sewer line were in better shape, the water would've been too far away to come back and visit. Maybe it would've drunk-dialed instead, hoping someone would answer, and when it heard the person at the other end of the line saying "Hello? Who is this? Do you know how late it is?" the water would gurgle gently in drunken apology and hang up, a sad little puddle of longing and loss.