By Scott T. Allison

Our toilet started running water intermittently between flushes, so I took the initiative to fix it. How hard could it be, I thought. That was my first mistake — I have a long, checkered history of trying to fix toilets. But denial and selective memory are powerful defense mechanisms, and money is money. If I just try harder, I should be able to conquer the toilet.

It didn’t happen.

My second mistake was setting out to the Big-Box hardware store to get a new flapper. Who needs customer assistance, I reasoned. Hubris is a terrible thing.

At Big-Box, I matched up the old one with the new one, brought the new one home, installed it, and discovered that it wasn’t quite the right size.

Like any good hero, I decided I needed help. This time I’d go to the smaller local hardware store where I’d get assistance from the friendly clerk.

Sure enough, at the small store an eager employee, a man in his late 60s, helped me pick out a different flapper. Even at this small store, there were over a dozen options – red flappers, black flappers, white flappers. Some plastic, some rubber, all of them enticing, all of them full of potential. The world of toilet flappers opened up to me in ways I never imagined.

I went home, installed the recommended flapper, and discovered that it too wasn’t quite the right size. Damn.

Like any good hero, I decided I needed more help. This time I recruited my wife to assist me. She’s handier around the house than I am, and surely we’d find the right flapper together. We went back to the small store to inspect more options.

Arriving at the store, I recognized the eager employee who helped me the day before. He asked the guy behind the counter to help us, and the four of us resumed The Great Flapper Hunt. We looked at them all, again, and found one that looked promising. Returning to the counter to ring it up, we found yet another employee waiting for us, making it five on our team, and this fifth Beatle had his own ideas.

The fifth guy walked us back to The Aisle of Great Flappers, and he found other more exotic flappers farther down the aisle that we hadn’t even seen before. The specter of added possibilities gave us all a shot of hope.

We settled on a flapper that showed incredible promise. We looked at it from all angles, comparing the old one with the new one, back-to-back and side-to-side, confirming without a doubt that we had finally identified The Flapper. The Chosen One.

We took it home and it didn’t work. Strike three.

But like any good hero, I persisted. Before leaving the store, the original small-store helper – the silver-haired man looking very much like Obi Wan Kenobe – raised his finger in the air and recommended what amounted to our last resort. “If this flapper doesn’t work,” he said, “there’s a big specialty plumbing store here in Richmond on Westwood Avenue. It has what you need.”

My wife and I made the long trek to this specialty store, our Land of Oz. The Wicked Witch of Westwood was waiting for us, ready to squeeze a whole new set of mistakes from us.

The Westwood store was a new, unfamiliar and dangerous world of PVC piping, hoses, and new-fangled brass fittings and connectors. There was not one mere aisle of flappers, but an entire building wing devoted to flappers. These flappers were magnificent. They came in unimagined shapes, colors, and sizes, some looking like Star Wars vessels, some like drones, and others like bongs. It was a confusing array of choices that dazzled and blinded and confused us.

Our jaws dropped. We were scared, overwhelmed, and desperate. No help was available. We stood alone and exposed as frauds in the midst of this cacophony of plumbing paraphernalia. We were numb, paralyzed and defeated.

At that moment I remembered what all heroes do when they find themselves in the proverbial belly of the whale. They find a way out. Noting the “Exit” sign, we made haste toward the door, but not before snatching up a cheap tube of plumbing sealant and quickly paying for it.

Our toilet works again. I am now calmed by the sound of intermittent running of water between flushes. The sealant did its job, sort of, on the old misshapen flapper. What was once a problem is now a success story, all thanks to my willingness to believe that I followed the blueprint of the hero’s journey.

The Great Flapper Hunt is over. During an occasional lucid moment, I am reminded that I failed. I then comfort myself with the words of my hero, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who once said: “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.”

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