2/100 (letter to a piece of plastic pipe)

Dear S-bend under the vanity sink,

There are only brief spaces in time that I actually feel like a grown-up. I may be in my early thirties (ugh) but most of the time I feel as though I'm stuck somewhere between about seventeen and twenty-two.

However, there are occasional moments that my psyche has somehow determined to be marks of maturity.
Filing my tax return is one of them. Buying jars of vitamin C tablets is another. Leaving the house before 8am for social appointments or work also gives me that no-longer-a-teenager vibe. And the other day I felt that unexpected grown up mood when I went all plumber-fu and pulled you apart in order to remove whatever was blocking my little vanity unit drain.

You're just a piece of plastic pipe, bent into a weird gravity-defying shape. I don't know why pipes exist like you anyway. They make life difficult for girls like me, who invariably hover over our bathroom sinks doing facial scrubs or straightening our hair. And though girls like me try to be fastidious about not letting the insoluble detritus of tooth-brushing and face-scrubbing and hair-straightening slip through those tiny pizza-slice-shaped gaps in the plug hole, of course stuff gets through. Obviously, otherwise I wouldn't be writing a letter to you right now.

And I write not to remind you of what a pain you can be, just sitting there whitely and plasticly, catching stuff that you should let go of, causing blockages and weirdness, and reminding me that I'm a girl and not a manly man. I write to thank you.

Because I put aside my natural ineptitude for DIY and instead I tackled you head-on. I pulled you apart, emptied you out, ran some bleach and baking soda through your system, and narrowly avoided turning the tap on to rinse out the pipes attached to you (this would have been an altogether different letter, in that case). Then I put you back together, tested for leaks, and saw you ran like a dream. And didn't I feel grown up. So thanks, lowly s-bend. For just a second, you helped me act my age.

Of course, then I went and ruined it by taking weird self-portraits in the bathroom mirror. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

Yours (just a little smugly),

Danielle

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Conversations:

Andrea -- we are book brain twins currently! You'll have to blog your responses to the books you're reading :).

Katie -- oh no, your world does sound particularly busy! I hope you survive through the rest of term okay.

Caitlin -- I'm reading Hard Times, and loving it just as much as I did when I was younger. I honestly think it's my favourite Dickens, even though hardly anyone else seems to like it. Narnia exhibition? Sounds amazing!

Bloss -- loved your comment, as always! Ooh, you have to try more Dickens! David Copperfield is brilliant. So too is Hard Times, the one I'm reading currently.

Staish -- you are welcome.

Meaghan -- goal for tonight: de-sting eyes by not staying up too late.