I glanced up from the letter and thought I saw Kate smirking.
The letter was from the village of Oak Park:
“The water supply to your residence will be interrupted from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, September 8th for work that will improve the reliability of the delivery system and enhance fire protection for the area.
“Please draw water sufficient for your needs prior to 8 a.m. Tuesday morning.”
Sufficient water?
What is sufficient?
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Drinking is not a problem. Just have to make sure there is bottled water in the house.
And we can shower early or the night before.
But how much water must be on hand in order to flush the toilet between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.?
It’s as I was reading this part of the letter to my wife that Kate smirked.
Kate is our cat. And she doesn’t need to flush a toilet. She has her litter box. I could tell what she was thinking: “Oh, you insufficiently evolved mammals living in the Dark Ages …” Regally, she strutted away.
Which did nothing to help with the problem.
Well, let’s see … How much water does it take to flush a toilet?
There is – believe it or not – a federal plumbing standard for how much water it should take to flush a toilet: 1.6 gallons. Unfortunately, because of age and other factors, the amount of water needed to flush any given toilet can amount to a good deal more than that.
How much water will it take to flush my toilet? And how many flushes might there be between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.?
This is going to take math.
Now, I have devoted my life to proving wrong those teachers who said I would need algebra, geometry and the like in later life. Never once in journalism have I had an editor tell me, “Hey, Sassone, the county board just raised the sales tax. I need you to do a quadratic equation.”
This was no time for me to admit I was wrong.
So, my wife and I – the cat haughtily abstained – worked out a non-math plan for the waterless day:
Sleep as late as possible.
Then spend the day out and use store and restaurant toilets.
So we did.
And it worked.
And when we came home that afternoon, the water was back on as promised.
And no math.
Paul Sassone is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.