What kind of regatta was it?

Well, it started like this.

The wife and I were about to buy a house.  Our first house.  And it was nerve-wracking, let me tell you.

I'll leave out the part about how we came to be looking for a house in the first place, or how we worried about ol' Wiggy's credit on whether or note we could even get financed to buy a house.  I'll even leave out the trials and hassles that preceded our getting the point where we were about to close on our new home.  Let's just focus in on one shining moment in time; one precise division of time that shall forever remain etched in my memory as a horrific incident I like to call "The Floating Turd Regatta."

The day was a Thursday.  Our mortgage was due to close on the following Friday at one p.m.  For anyone who has never been to a 'closing', it is one of those peculiar institutions that you just knew were invented strictly by lawyers for their own amusement.  You and your realtor and your lawyer go to a lawyer's office where you meet with the sellers and their realtor and their seller, and you all bring certified checks to make the lawyers and realtors happy, and the buyer and seller leave feeling, if not raped, at least severely molested.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh yes, the day before the close.  My wife and I were scheduled to take a 'walk-through' of the house, since the current owners had cleared out their stuff and it was sitting empty.  This was to ensure that the sellers had not suddenly taken the notion that the floors were part of their furniture and therefore should go with them, and so on.  You get the idea.

Well, your ol' pal Wiggy got off work at about 5 p.m. on that fateful evening.  We were to meet our realtor at 7 p.m. to do the walk-through.  So, about 5:30 or so, we headed over to the local "Golden Corral" restaurant to have some dinner.

You ever been to a Golden Corral?  Well, if not, you might be missing out.  Golden Corral is a chain of buffet restaurants, whose gimmick is that they prepare and serve steak your way right on the grill at the buffet table.  The rest of it is pretty standard  buffet fare.  You pay a flat fee, you get a couple of plates and some drinks, and you and your wife take turns raiding the buffet until you're too full or too embarrassed to go on.  It's fast and it's cheap, and occasionally it's good.  So there you go.

So, here we are the Golden Corral.  Normally, I just go for one plate - maybe a second plate for a little bit of desert afterwards, some pie or something.  That's 'normally.'  But in this case, I had several things working against me.  First, your ol pal Wiggy was nervous.  Yep, Wigs never bought no house before, and that's a tremendous amount of stress.  Second, Wigs has time to kill before the 'walk through'.  That's a bad combination folks, especially at an all-you-can-eat buffet.  Let me repeat: that's a BAD combination at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

What happens?  Well, the obvious, of course.  Wiggy eats.  Then Wiggy goes back for seconds.  Then ol' Wiggy checks his watch, sees that he still has a lot of time to kill, and goes back for thirds.  Then he has himself some desert.  Finally, it's time to go over and see the realtor and take the stroll through the house.  I know the suspense is killing you.  Hang on.

My wife and I got to the house, met with the realtor.  She opened the door for us and proceeded us into the house.  Now, let me take a moment and tell you about this house. You see, the house we were buying is old.  Like built in 1923.  A bungalow of a certain age.  Wood floors.  High ceilings.  Arts-and-Crafts styles.  You get the idea.  2800 square feet, of which about 50 square feet of it was sub-divided into two bathrooms - upstairs and downstairs.  And having eaten so much dinner, and being so tense and nervous, well...nature intervened.  Your ol pal Wigwam had to answer the call.

I instructed the realtor and my loving wife to go inspect the upstairs of the dwelling, while I inspected the inside of the downstairs loo.  Yes.  A very thorough inspection indeed.  Thank goodness that the previous owners had left some toilet paper behind.  Bless them.

I settled down, um, well just to settle down, alright?  You know what happened next.  And it did.  In great quantity.  Thankfully, it was soon over.

Ah, but fate had a kick in the snarglies in store for your hero.  When your ol' buddy Wiggy pressed the flush, it did not.  Or rather, it tried.  But it failed, and heavy localized flooding ensued.  Quickly.

And of course, this was an essentially empty house.  No plungers, no towels, no anything to staunch a flood, to hold back the rain.  Nada.  And worse - this house was not yet even ours.  We had not yet signed the papers, not yet pledged our lives and those of our friends and relatives to some unholy bank in Iowa for all eternity.  No, this was someone else's house I had just perpetrated this foul deed inside.

I called for my wife.  "WIFE!!!"

She came quickly - I did not engage in banter.  I demanded that she depart instantly for yon shopping center, thereupon to purchase a plunger and paper towels, and to return forthwith.

My wife.  Bless her!  She knows the Wigmeister, she knows him well.  She knows what evil things lurk in his bowels, and what must have happened.  She immediately grabbed her car keys and headed for the front door at maximum velocity, trailing one confused realtor in her wake.  I was left to try to find the water valve to turn off the flood that would not end, my own private Idaho in the bathroom of a stranger's house, my Floating Turd Regatta.

In the end, all was well.  My wife returned, I plunged.  I mopped and cleaned and then I cleaned myself up as well.  We departed, having hidden the evidence of my shocking crime.  The realtor, since clued, was giggling in mirth - undoubtedly your ol' pal Wigwam will become the stuff of legends in her drunken nights hanging out with fellow realtors - "Let me tell you about this client I had once who was SO NERVOUS, he..."  The excitement, however, was over.

We left soon after that.  The next morning, we got up early, went to the bank, got a cashier's check, and drove to the close.  We signed a tall stack of papers, were given some keys, and now we own that house, wherein I held the first regatta.  We hope it is not an annual event.

Keep Smilin'

Wigwam Jones