The General wears a diaper

By Alan Linda | The Daily Journal

Published Tuesday, July 8, 2008

General Electric the Washing Machine was coughing so hard that I could hear him clear upstairs. That tubby gut of his was acting like a megaphone. The floor was vibrating at seismic levels detectable clear to the coast. I raced down the stairs.

It was a dark night. I turned on the laundry room light, ignored the disarray of clothes scattered all around because, because, well, because I didn’t even have to ignore it, to be honest. Back a couple of years, I nailed a clothes line to the wall behind General Electric the Washing Machine, and hanging from it were every orphan stocking I found when I cleaned the room up.

I figure I’ll give the room a couple more years to cough up the matches to those socks on the wall, and then I’ll clean it again.

In the meantime, I was shocked when I turned on the light. Genera General Electric the Washing Machine was coughing so hard that I could hear him clear upstairs. That tubby gut of his was acting like a megaphone. The floor was vibrating at seismic levels detectable clear to the coast. I raced down the stairs.

In the meantime, I was shocked when I turned on the light. General Electric the Washing Machine was as white as a ghost. “Are you alright?” I asked him.

Stupid question. People are good at stupid questions. I was once in a car accident, broke my nose, had blood all over me. The first thing a passing motorist who stopped said was: “Are you alright?”

General Electric the Washing Machine let out another snort. He was not alright. Water sprayed out from beneath him on two different sides. His voice came out in gurgles, like he was talking through a tube partially filled with water: “Where are all these baby clothes coming from?” (“Gurgle, gurgle.”) He said that.

I said: “You’re dying, and you’re wondering about baby clothes?”

He said: “I’m dying because of the baby clothes.” He gurgled again, said: “I think there’s a diaper stuck in my lower intestine.”

He’s such a hypochondriac. However, this time, maybe he’s right. My daughter, her husband, and their daughter, who is seven months old, are spending some time here until fall comes, and a university teaching position opens up.

“You don’t have a lower intestine,” I said. Well, he does, kind of. Something must connect that tub of a gut of his to The Septic System.

I asked him: “Where does it hurt?” Then I poked him a good one in his drain hose, to see if it had prolapsed. I told him what every doctor has ever told me. “Hey. You’re gonna feel some slight pressure.” Someday, I’m going to look up in some medical text exactly what “pressure” means, and what I think I’ll find is it’s medical speak for “HURTS LIKE HELL!”

General Electric said: “Ouch! What’d you do that for? That hurt!”

“Ok, that’s good. Numbness there would indicate something very bad.”

“I’m leaking from several different places all at once,” The General gurgled, “how can anything else be worse?”

That told me I had to go in. “OK,” I warned him, “suck in your tub, I’m going to have to pop you open, and I don’t want to be hurt by any buttons flying out at me under high pressure.”

I popped his front cover, and found several other places to poke.

“Ouch!”

“Ugh!”

“Ooof!”

I stood back up, and asked him: “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

He thoughtfully scratched his chinny console with his lid, and said: “Give me the good news, first.”

Sure. “Hey, Sears has washing machines on sale.”

He didn’t think that was funny.

I gave him the bad news, then. “It’s your pump.”

“Oooooh no, not my pump.” He was distraught. He began to wring his water hoses.

“Don’t do that. You keep that up,” I told him, “you’ll spring a leak sometime when I’m not here, and you’ll flood The Septic System.” One thing everyone in here realizes is, you don’t mess with him. Even Sir Nautilus the Water Heater, who routinely wets the floor because President Bush upsets him so much, is careful just how many tears of frustration he leaks out at one time. You send too much water to The Septic System, he shuts down, and everyone is up poop the creek.

“Yes, your pump.” I felt bad for him. He knew what was coming. I was going to have to unplug him, flatline him for however long it took to do a pump transplant. That meant a live hose bypass, and the possibility that the twenty or so gallons of water held up above the pump in his high-capacity gut tub might burst forth.

“Look,” I told him, “I’ve done a hundred of these, and once the new pump is in, you’ll feel like a young machine again, and maybe, I get in there, I’ll find it’s just a blockage. I’ll clear that out, get you right back in business.”

The rest of the appliances started singing “For he’s a jolly good fellow.” They’re such a sympathetic bunch.

“I have to get you back in shape. There are lots of diapers coming your way.”

He fainted.

I unplugged him.

Alan Linda writes from his New York Mills home.