We’re going to talk about toilets today. 

I won’t be graphic. It’s cool to sip your coffee and eat your biscotti. 

I remember the day I moved into my apartment. Just me and my cat. Four tiny rooms in a former attic, outfitted with a custom shower and kitchen range because the space was so small.  

Five other people lived in my house when I was growing up. They were lovely, but four bedrooms and one full bathroom meant you always had a roommate and bathroom time was carefully scheduled. 

And nothing, really, was your own. 

Like the time I splurged on a $50 face cream only to discover my sister sneaking dabs for her own face. 

Or the soda. Each Saturday, Indy bought a six-pack of Coke while he was grocery shopping. Two cans for each kid. 

My cans were gone by Sunday.  

If my siblings didn’t tackle their cans by Monday, I took care of it for them. 

Yes. I drank their soda. 

Did you miss the part where my sister used my expensive cream?  

Are you wondering what my brother did to warrant the appropriation of his soda? 

Besides existing. 

Obviously. 

I’ll tell you what he did. One time, he borrowed my car. I told him he couldn’t touch my six-CD changer or my CD case. Willie and my best friend teamed up, surprised me with that CD changer. Had it installed and everything. 

Yes. He touched my CD changer. And CD case. 

My CDs were no longer in alphabetical order. The Carpenters sat before Aerosmith. If I Were a Carpenter was before Bon Jovi. Andrew Lloyd Weber’s collection of hits was before Patti Rothberg, which is a big fat no because “W” comes after “R,” friends. After. 

Alanis was at the end, but Alanis is queen and should always come first in the CD case of a twentysomething in the mid-’90s with a few ex-boyfriends who know exactly what song they can go listen to. 

Yeah. 

Willie implored me not to say anything. “You’re being unreasonable,” she said. “Nobody alphabetizes the music in their car.” 

But I did say something because I alphabetize the music in my car. I do.  

And that’s why I drank his soda a good eight years before my brother decimated the CD case. Little brothers will always ruin your CD case. Always. 

When I moved into my own place, I was excited to have things stay exactly where I put them. To have the TV always set to WPVI for the morning. To never have a dirty dish in the sink. 

Like a normal human being. 

I stocked my apartment with Chef Boyardee ravioli, counter spray from Whole Foods, and cat food. 

Someday, I’ll tell you the story of The Ravioli Bandit. Someday. 

When it came to other basics — toothpaste, dish soap — I bought what Indy always bought. I was like Bridget Fonda in Point of No Return, following another shopper around the grocery store because I didn’t know what to buy. 

And that was when I discovered the toilet in my shoebox apartment could not accommodate the fluffy, thick toilet paper Indy always bought. 

I never encountered a clogged toilet when I lived at home. I had no idea what to do, except leave it for Indy to deal with because that’s what I did with everything that broke. 

But I didn’t live with Indy anymore. 

So I called him. 

“You have to plunge it,” Indy said. 

Cool. Got it. Plunge the toilet. 

With, um, with what? 

“A toilet plunger, Grace,” Indy said. Which is not my name. That’s just what Indy called us when we did something stupid. 

That’s how I came to own a toilet plunger. 

Which I threw out when I moved to my house. If I put a toilet plunger in my car, my car will never be clean.  

Over the years I lived in my apartment, I eschewed the fluffy toilet paper for basic, thin, harsh toilet paper. My tiny apartment obviously had tiny plumbing.  

I was sure moving to my house could deliver me from crude toilet paper. 

When I bought toilet paper for my house, I bought that pampering toilet paper Indy always bought. 

But it, too, clogged the toilet. 

The house I grew up in, apparently, had plumbing the diameter of the Lehigh Tunnel.  

I’m sure Indy jury-rigged that plumbing. Like the many, many times he hemmed his pants with duct tape. 

A few weeks ago, I was watching Love Story: John & Carolyn. Working my way through that show is taking roughly as long as Odysseus’ odyssey.  

I heard a tap–tap–tap. I ignored it because A) I never got over that whole “Indy will fix it” thing and B) um, John & Carolyn. 

“Uh, Mom?” my son said. 

Which every parent knows is never good.  

Water dripped from the kitchen ceiling. That tap–tap–tap was actually a growing puddle on the floor. Water stains bloomed on the drywall above our heads. 

I ran for the upstairs bathroom. If the puddle on the kitchen floor was Lake Erie, the one in the bathroom was the Atlantic Ocean. Water poured over the toilet’s bowl. 

This has happened two more times since that day. Once, I noticed it as I was about to shower.  

Nothing says you’ve come a long way from that Lilliputian apartment like furiously throwing towels beneath a leaking toilet while you’re buck naked. 

“Why?!” I whined. “We don’t use the nice toilet paper! Why is this happening?!” 

My question has gone unanswered.

But my siblings are probably to blame.