It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

So the other day a bar of soap fell into the toilet. I was the only person in the vicinity at the time, so you could blame me if you wanted to be unfair about it. The thing is that I have a cabinet above the toilet and I was reaching for something and the bar of soap got in the way somehow and fell into the toilet. You might as well blame gravity.

I stood there, glumly considering my options. Fish it out somehow? How to put this—I'm not overly squeamish about just plain water in a toilet. That said, I didn't care to fish the soap at the that particular juncture, if you understand what I'm driving at.

So I considered further. And I decided that after seeing millions of bars of soap get all mushy in hotel showers, I had to believe that a bar of soap could hardly live very long inside a toilet. So I flushed it. The toilet emptied very slowly, but I figured I had to give the mushification process a little time.

Twenty-four hours later, the toilet was still clogged and emptying with glacial slowness—it seemed, in fact, to be getting worse, not better. I maintain that my original reasoning was still perfectly sound, based as it was on facts and experience. But the actual experiment did prove that soap doesn't necessarily get mushy and flush away within a day or so if you drop it down the toilet.

I went online to learn more. You shouldn't always go online to solve a problem if you're easily scared, because I read a lot of horror stories about using tons of hot water, buying something called a "toilet snake," on up to taking apart the toilet.

One person online had said to reach into the toilet and see if you could grab the soap—it's what plumber would do, this person said. I gave this a lot of thought. It seemed like what a Viking would do, after all, much less a plumber. It would take some gumption, but that's a good thing, right, gumption? And doctors put their hands in all kinds of places and we still respect them, certainly. So I cleaned the bowl until it was dazzling and then reached on in. Did you know that the conduit in a toilet actually goes up, not down? You didn't know that? Neither did I. It was kind of intriguing. But up or down, there was no soap there within a reachable distance. Sigh.

Another person online asked the sufferer who'd pleaded for advice whether he or she had used a plunger. Hmm. I went and got a plunger. After about 2.4 strokes, the toilet gave a harrumphing gargle and drained with lusty vigor. I tried a few more flushes. Still vigorous. Like a leaf fallen in a stream, the bar of soap is now making its way down to the sounding sea, I suppose. At any rate, it's not in my toilet any more. I'm glad to be able to add to the body of literature on this topic. But I'm even gladder to have a working toilet. Long story short, folks, try the plunger first. That's my advice.