Hundreds of thousands of white men, age 50 and older, must have stories to tell just like this one.
I am 65, white, educated, in a profession and a life that has worked out very well for me. I grew up in Texas, son of a divorced mom, and we lived with my grandmother, in my mom's comfortable childhood home. The city was segregated. Blacks lived in their own community, east of the white part of the city, and their kids went to their own schools. I assume they went to their own movie theaters and their own restaurants and their own parks, too, because they could not come to ours.
Yet there was contact. I had fleeting contact, on autumn Thursday nights, with black kids who played football for the black high school. They played some of their games in the white high school stadium, and going to their games was a vivid experience. Their games seemed louder. The white kids had great football teams in my town in those days, championship teams, and there was a lot of energy and noise on Friday nights. But our noise seemed scripted, disciplined, against the Thursday night noise of the black games. The black high school didn't win many games, but it didn't seem to matter, on Thursday nights at the stadium. Their noise was always joyous.
Or maybe it did matter. I don't know. I never bothered to find out. I don’t consider that part of a sociological fault line; I never bothered to find out most of the answers that I wish I had now about my adolescent experience in my hometown. One ignored chance is more important to me now than the others. One of the kids on those black teams sought me out during his games, just along the sideline, over the fence, just spontaneous connection. I don't know why he wanted to communicate with me. I can remember his face, though, sweaty from the game, which was still under way, and a huge smile and disingenuous eyes. Maybe he admired me. I was a player on the championship white team. Because I would talk to him, he could talk to me.
My grandmother, Susie, was educated, a schoolteacher, and a woman of her times. She migrated from Alabama to Texas around the turn from the 19th to the 20th century. She was born in rural Alabama and lived in rural Texas. By the time I was born in 1943, she was the widowed matriarch of a household in the city where I grew up. She feared God, knew some of the classics, worked hard, was completely generous, and she was humble, and tough. And she could not tolerate blacks. I don't think she hated them. She simply made a face. It's the same face I would make now when I see Bill O'Reilly. Just a sort of low-grade, but earnest, dislike. I never asked her about it.
I have gone into the files of my hometown newspaper and there, in 1954, is a headline announcing the judgment in Brown vs. Board of Education, that declared unconstitutional the "separate but equal" basis for the segregation of schools. That same year the paper published stories about the desegregation of Little Rock High School. In my town, those stories were pebbles thrown into a giant pond. The ripples wouldn't reach us for another decade. When I returned in 1969, and worked there as a sportswriter for three years, the city had become integrated. The black high school was closed, and black kids played with the white kids on the city's two high school football teams.
I left the city in 1972 and have lived in Southern California ever since. I don't know, this week, how the city reacted, as a community, to Barack Obama's speech. In the planning for my 40th high school reunion several years ago, I suggested that our class, the class of 1961, include all the kids in the community at our 40th reunion. I wondered what might happen, if the white kids and the black kids from that class finally sat down together in an auditorium, or a banquet hall, and just sat, and faced each other, and started to talk. The idea was not well received. I was thinking about my over-the-fence acquaintance and his thread of connection, and mine, at the black high school games. I think about him and wonder where he is, and how he is doing, and as I do so, I realize that of all the random events whose result is where I sit, and who I am, today, one prevails: I was born white.
And so from that rises the final irony, which paraphrases Geraldine Ferraro: if I weren't a white man, I wouldn't be in this position today. Change just one thing, make me black instead of white, and I have no idea where, or who, I would be. Maybe THAT is what white men fear.
March 20, 2008
March 11, 2008
The long fall from perfection
Americans always start with the assumption that their elected officials, and others in leadership office, are saints. Maybe it is because of our cultural faith in goodness, or maybe we are just generous.
How much easier, however, and more practical, the American experience would be, if we just turned the assumption around, and looked at any candidate for office, high or low, as a no-good, immoral, cover-your-ass son of a bitch.
I made the switch even before Bill Clinton started lighting up Monica Lewinsky with cigars. I believe my original thoughts on the subject date clear back to Richard Nixon and Watergate. But I didn’t follow through on them – I let myself believe that the Nixon immorality must be unique – until the late 1980s, several highly placed scandals later, when I picked up the paper one morning and looked at a photo of Donna Rice sitting in Gary Hart’s lap.
No more, I said. No more permitting my faith to be blind-sided by Donna Rice, or Fanne Fox, or Elizabeth Ray, or any other anonymous figure from the boobs and bribes school who, if it hadn’t been for Spiro T. Agnew or Gary Hart or Wilbur Mills or Bill Clinton would have worn their anonymity to the grave.
That same day, I penned my bottom-up manifesto. I argued that any American male over the age of 25, who had been to four years of college, already possessed an inventory of experiences that made him unfit for high office, if and when discovered. Thus it was natural to expect the worst of a candidate, and let himself prove himself upward. Those with silver linings in their clouds would naturally emerge from the morass, and the electorate could appreciate the brightness of the silver lining without losing sight of all those clouds, which would soften the fall, if ever it came.
How unnatural, meanwhile, to assume abiding goodness in a candidate unless he or she could prove he had been plucked from school no later than puberty and educated in a convent where media, coeds, and other temptations of the flesh were not available. Because of that, I can assure you right now that there are things about Barack Obama, about Hillary Clinton, about John McCain, that we do not know, but should be willing to forgive when they are revealed, because we knew they were there all along.
The psychology and sociological communities are starting to get on board with this. On television, we are never more than a channel click away from a learned professional weighing in about Eliot Spitzer, the no-good son of a bitch. They opine that he turned out to be a no-good son of a bitch for natural reasons. Surprise! They suppose he is really no different from anyone else, you or I, who might go into politics. No kidding! They suggest that politicians aren’t getting steadily more crass; they always were. It’s just that in today’s media world, they’re just getting caught more often.
I am so glad, in this environment, that I am a bottom-upper. Watching the perfect in their falls from perfection was so painful. I still flinch at the memory of Nixon’s resignation speech in August of 1974. But it wasn’t his perfection he fell from; it was mine. Reports from New York today say people are "stunned" by the Spitzer story. Poor innocents. Watching the sons of bitches striving to climb out of their primordial moral slime is so much easier. Those who make it are so much more believable. Those who don’t, well, maybe Eliot Spitzer will know better next time. I bet that’s what he’ll say in his book.
How much easier, however, and more practical, the American experience would be, if we just turned the assumption around, and looked at any candidate for office, high or low, as a no-good, immoral, cover-your-ass son of a bitch.
I made the switch even before Bill Clinton started lighting up Monica Lewinsky with cigars. I believe my original thoughts on the subject date clear back to Richard Nixon and Watergate. But I didn’t follow through on them – I let myself believe that the Nixon immorality must be unique – until the late 1980s, several highly placed scandals later, when I picked up the paper one morning and looked at a photo of Donna Rice sitting in Gary Hart’s lap.
No more, I said. No more permitting my faith to be blind-sided by Donna Rice, or Fanne Fox, or Elizabeth Ray, or any other anonymous figure from the boobs and bribes school who, if it hadn’t been for Spiro T. Agnew or Gary Hart or Wilbur Mills or Bill Clinton would have worn their anonymity to the grave.
That same day, I penned my bottom-up manifesto. I argued that any American male over the age of 25, who had been to four years of college, already possessed an inventory of experiences that made him unfit for high office, if and when discovered. Thus it was natural to expect the worst of a candidate, and let himself prove himself upward. Those with silver linings in their clouds would naturally emerge from the morass, and the electorate could appreciate the brightness of the silver lining without losing sight of all those clouds, which would soften the fall, if ever it came.
How unnatural, meanwhile, to assume abiding goodness in a candidate unless he or she could prove he had been plucked from school no later than puberty and educated in a convent where media, coeds, and other temptations of the flesh were not available. Because of that, I can assure you right now that there are things about Barack Obama, about Hillary Clinton, about John McCain, that we do not know, but should be willing to forgive when they are revealed, because we knew they were there all along.
The psychology and sociological communities are starting to get on board with this. On television, we are never more than a channel click away from a learned professional weighing in about Eliot Spitzer, the no-good son of a bitch. They opine that he turned out to be a no-good son of a bitch for natural reasons. Surprise! They suppose he is really no different from anyone else, you or I, who might go into politics. No kidding! They suggest that politicians aren’t getting steadily more crass; they always were. It’s just that in today’s media world, they’re just getting caught more often.
I am so glad, in this environment, that I am a bottom-upper. Watching the perfect in their falls from perfection was so painful. I still flinch at the memory of Nixon’s resignation speech in August of 1974. But it wasn’t his perfection he fell from; it was mine. Reports from New York today say people are "stunned" by the Spitzer story. Poor innocents. Watching the sons of bitches striving to climb out of their primordial moral slime is so much easier. Those who make it are so much more believable. Those who don’t, well, maybe Eliot Spitzer will know better next time. I bet that’s what he’ll say in his book.
March 08, 2008
The New American Revolution
Beginning today, Sen. Barack Obama should start calling his presidential campaign "The New American Revolution." As in, "My campaign offers change to the American people, change so fundamental that it amounts to a New American Revolution."
As David Brooks wrote in Friday's New York Times: "Barack Obama had a theory. It was that the voters are tired of the partisan paralysis of the last 20 years. The theory was that if Obama could inspire a grass-roots movement with a new kind of leadership, he could ride it to the White House and end gridlock in Washington."
The key words there are "inspire," and "a new kind of leadership." Brooks wrote that Obama's entire campaign was built on bringing this message to the people, and it was working:
"He's claimed that there's an 'awakening' in this country – people 'hungry for a different kind of politics.' It has brought millions of new voters into politics. It has given him grounds to fend off attacks. In debate after debate, he has accused Hillary Clinton and others of practicing the old kind of politics. When he was under assault in South Carolina, he rose above the barrage and made the Clintons look sleazy."
Obama knew, Brooks pointed out, that, to sustain the message, he had to remain scrupulously above the barrage. No use inspiring people to turn their backs on "the old kind of politics," if he was going to resort to the old kind himself.
Then, before the Ohio and Texas primaries, the Clinton campaign attacked him and, as Brooks said, "the attacks worked." Obama lost both primaries, and the pressure is on. "Obama Camp Sees Fine Line in Hitting Back," said a headline in Saturday's Times. The story was about "how far he can go in striking back without sacrificing his claim to be practicing a new brand of politics."
The answer is, he can't strike back at all. If he goes into the trenches with Hillary, "the excitement of Obama-mania will seem like a distant, childish mirage," Brooks said. "People will wonder if Obama ever believed any of that stuff himself . . . New politics is all he's got. He loses that, he loses everything."
The first American Revolution was like that. New politics was all the Americans had, and they were willing to go to war to bring about that change. If they lost that, they lost everything. Not all were committed to it, but enough to win the day. Even in winning, they had no set picture of life on the other side. They were creating a new American experience one day at a time, and they were doing it on the fly, with no guarantees and no destination in sight. Of course their commitment demanded that they be inspired against the old politics, and today that inspiration is historic.
Obama has to go to war now, never fire a single shot, but raise his campaign to a new level of inspiration in his new kind of leadership by elevating his call for change to a call for revolt against the old politics as they pop up on the campaign trail, routing them out one-by-one, with a barrage of ballots. He has to let the voters do his fighting for him. His only stand is to prove that the commitment to revolt is there, as the New American Revolution slowly rolls toward summer.
And if, as David Brooks suggests, he has "never explained how this new politics would actually produce bread-and-butter benefits to people in places like Youngstown and Altoona," it's because he can't, any more than the first revolution's leaders could. All the people of Youngstown and Altoona can expect is the removal of the old politics, and whatever that might mean to a new American experience out there unseen on the other side. Obama is the star, but this election is about people hungry for a different kind of politics, who are willing to take a leap of faith.
As David Brooks wrote in Friday's New York Times: "Barack Obama had a theory. It was that the voters are tired of the partisan paralysis of the last 20 years. The theory was that if Obama could inspire a grass-roots movement with a new kind of leadership, he could ride it to the White House and end gridlock in Washington."
The key words there are "inspire," and "a new kind of leadership." Brooks wrote that Obama's entire campaign was built on bringing this message to the people, and it was working:
"He's claimed that there's an 'awakening' in this country – people 'hungry for a different kind of politics.' It has brought millions of new voters into politics. It has given him grounds to fend off attacks. In debate after debate, he has accused Hillary Clinton and others of practicing the old kind of politics. When he was under assault in South Carolina, he rose above the barrage and made the Clintons look sleazy."
Obama knew, Brooks pointed out, that, to sustain the message, he had to remain scrupulously above the barrage. No use inspiring people to turn their backs on "the old kind of politics," if he was going to resort to the old kind himself.
Then, before the Ohio and Texas primaries, the Clinton campaign attacked him and, as Brooks said, "the attacks worked." Obama lost both primaries, and the pressure is on. "Obama Camp Sees Fine Line in Hitting Back," said a headline in Saturday's Times. The story was about "how far he can go in striking back without sacrificing his claim to be practicing a new brand of politics."
The answer is, he can't strike back at all. If he goes into the trenches with Hillary, "the excitement of Obama-mania will seem like a distant, childish mirage," Brooks said. "People will wonder if Obama ever believed any of that stuff himself . . . New politics is all he's got. He loses that, he loses everything."
The first American Revolution was like that. New politics was all the Americans had, and they were willing to go to war to bring about that change. If they lost that, they lost everything. Not all were committed to it, but enough to win the day. Even in winning, they had no set picture of life on the other side. They were creating a new American experience one day at a time, and they were doing it on the fly, with no guarantees and no destination in sight. Of course their commitment demanded that they be inspired against the old politics, and today that inspiration is historic.
Obama has to go to war now, never fire a single shot, but raise his campaign to a new level of inspiration in his new kind of leadership by elevating his call for change to a call for revolt against the old politics as they pop up on the campaign trail, routing them out one-by-one, with a barrage of ballots. He has to let the voters do his fighting for him. His only stand is to prove that the commitment to revolt is there, as the New American Revolution slowly rolls toward summer.
And if, as David Brooks suggests, he has "never explained how this new politics would actually produce bread-and-butter benefits to people in places like Youngstown and Altoona," it's because he can't, any more than the first revolution's leaders could. All the people of Youngstown and Altoona can expect is the removal of the old politics, and whatever that might mean to a new American experience out there unseen on the other side. Obama is the star, but this election is about people hungry for a different kind of politics, who are willing to take a leap of faith.
March 03, 2008
In Texas, an Ivins-fulfilling prophecy
I sure do wish Molly Ivins were alive and writing about the vote in Texas this week. The rest of us writers can and will try, but we all know, particularly us old Texans who know who Molly Ivins was, that we’d all come in a damn near invisible second, if God decided to hook Molly onto Eternal Press International, and let her description of this election appear in tomorrow morning’s editions.
It has been just a little over a year since Molly Ivins died, and I wonder how many thousands of Texans have suddenly sat up straight in the last couple of weeks and cussed the fates that she, and they, are going to miss the story that, above all others, she was meant to write.
The funny, and typical, thing, is that she saw this story coming. She may even be responsible for it, a self-fulfilling Molly Ivins prophecy. It would be interesting to go back and see who in the Democratic Party read her column of Jan. 20, 2006, dateline Austin, distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate. It began:
“I’d like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president . . . Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges . . . “
If you aren’t familiar with the Ivins style, she tended to not hold back, and she did it with humor, and a pure feel for her native vernacular. To-wit: “I’ve said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachsunds were ‘German dogs.’ They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds. The MINUTE someone impugns your patriotism by opposing this (Iraq) war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country really means. That, or you could just piss on them elegantly, as Rep. John Murtha did.”
Molly wrote this by way of lecturing the Democratic Party on “political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.”
At that time, January of 2006, the country was so tired of bull that events leading to the Democratic victories in the midterm congressional elections were already clicking into place, and Hillary was emerging as a leading party candidate in the 2008 presidential election. Clearly, she was not Molly’s gal. “Enough,” she wrote. “Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone.”
Then Molly Ivins wrote:
“If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it.”
Well, he turned out not to be from Minnesota, but from Illinois, and here he is, front and center in Texas. Damn, this would have been the perfect Molly Ivins story. It has her brand all over it.
It has been just a little over a year since Molly Ivins died, and I wonder how many thousands of Texans have suddenly sat up straight in the last couple of weeks and cussed the fates that she, and they, are going to miss the story that, above all others, she was meant to write.
The funny, and typical, thing, is that she saw this story coming. She may even be responsible for it, a self-fulfilling Molly Ivins prophecy. It would be interesting to go back and see who in the Democratic Party read her column of Jan. 20, 2006, dateline Austin, distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate. It began:
“I’d like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president . . . Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges . . . “
If you aren’t familiar with the Ivins style, she tended to not hold back, and she did it with humor, and a pure feel for her native vernacular. To-wit: “I’ve said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachsunds were ‘German dogs.’ They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds. The MINUTE someone impugns your patriotism by opposing this (Iraq) war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country really means. That, or you could just piss on them elegantly, as Rep. John Murtha did.”
Molly wrote this by way of lecturing the Democratic Party on “political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.”
At that time, January of 2006, the country was so tired of bull that events leading to the Democratic victories in the midterm congressional elections were already clicking into place, and Hillary was emerging as a leading party candidate in the 2008 presidential election. Clearly, she was not Molly’s gal. “Enough,” she wrote. “Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone.”
Then Molly Ivins wrote:
“If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it.”
Well, he turned out not to be from Minnesota, but from Illinois, and here he is, front and center in Texas. Damn, this would have been the perfect Molly Ivins story. It has her brand all over it.
March 01, 2008
Signature in the night
I have been out of practice for quite some time, but today I can report my signature handyman skills are intact.
During the night last night, every 90 seconds or so, the toilet in the back bathroom would emit a brief gushing sound, then fall silent for another 90 seconds. That brief gushing sound was my signature. In 95 percent of all the handyman projects that I have undertaken in almost five decades, I have left a personal signature of some kind.
A couple of those signatures required summoning a professional. Most of them, though, were in the category of what I call "ancillary dilemmas." Some primary dilemma will arise: a leaky toilet. In my work to correct the primary dilemma, I will set off an ancillary dilemma: the leaky toilet becomes a toilet twice as leaky as it was before.
Or, in this case, the leak will be stopped but the toilet tank won't fill. Oh, it will fill, but it takes about six hours. I can talk knowledgably about ancillary dilemmas; I reasoned that because the plumbing is so old (maybe going back as far as the 1950s), when I shut off the valve to the toilet's water supply (it took a wrench and some muscle), corrosion was loosed into the line, which traveled into the fill valve (the thing with a cup on it that slides up and down) in the tank, the same way a leg clot travels up the body and causes a heart attack.
The corrosion no doubt had caused a massive heart attack in the fill valve. I was going to leave it. It was a pretty nifty signature, after all: six hours of a faint, reedy whine until the tank was filled. But Karen would have none of it. "Please fix the tank," she commanded.
I decided not to just replace the fill valve, but the water supply valve and feeder line as well. You have to appreciate the peril inherent in such a decision. Normally it is a job that would take 25 minutes. In the handyman's world, if all goes exactly right, it will take two days and three trips, with potential for ancillary dilemmas that would fill three pages.
But I am experienced, and my seasoning told me to take all the old parts with me into the store, hand them to a salesperson in the plumbing aisle, hope to God they were not too old to have no replacements, and let the salesperson fill my arms with the necessary new parts. This is exactly what happened. At home, I spread the parts out on the kitchen table and read everything twice.
In the bathroom, I spread the instructions on the toilet seat and lay the parts on the rug. A very wet rug, by the way, due to minor flooding during disassembly. After 30 minutes and a couple of grave decisions (the true meaning of "finger tight," for example), everything was back together. Outside, then down at the wall, I turned the water back on. Such moments of truth, these tiny errands become. Whoosh! came the water through the new fill valve and into the tank. In seconds the tank was filled, and I adjusted the black cup gizmo to raise the level a little. Then the fill valve clicked closed. Silence. Filled tank. No leaks. I flushed it. It worked.
I replaced the tank lid with a Harrison Ford flourish and went to get a towel to blot up the rug, then turned a fan on the rug to hasten drying. Mission accomplished. Nice evening, good dinner, a little TV, bedtime. Shortly after 1, I woke up and, lying there, heard the sound. Unmistakable, the sound of a toilet running, even if for only one second. Then I heard it again. Again. I tiptoed to the bathroom, lifted the tank lid. No leak, no nothing. Perfect silence. Then: the sound. Loud, standing right there. I jumped.
I left it as it was, hoping Karen would not awaken before daylight. I did not want to be trouble-shooting a toilet with a flashlight. In bed, listening with a sort of aggravated fondness to my signature, I remembered something about the instructions, something about holding the black cup under water. I had not done that during the reassembly. At first light, I arose, fished the instructions out of the garbage, read again about the cup, strode to the bathroom, and held it under water for the prescribed 30 seconds without, I might add, overflowing the tank.
It has been three hours now, and I think I have fixed it. But I won't be comfortable for a couple of days.
During the night last night, every 90 seconds or so, the toilet in the back bathroom would emit a brief gushing sound, then fall silent for another 90 seconds. That brief gushing sound was my signature. In 95 percent of all the handyman projects that I have undertaken in almost five decades, I have left a personal signature of some kind.
A couple of those signatures required summoning a professional. Most of them, though, were in the category of what I call "ancillary dilemmas." Some primary dilemma will arise: a leaky toilet. In my work to correct the primary dilemma, I will set off an ancillary dilemma: the leaky toilet becomes a toilet twice as leaky as it was before.
Or, in this case, the leak will be stopped but the toilet tank won't fill. Oh, it will fill, but it takes about six hours. I can talk knowledgably about ancillary dilemmas; I reasoned that because the plumbing is so old (maybe going back as far as the 1950s), when I shut off the valve to the toilet's water supply (it took a wrench and some muscle), corrosion was loosed into the line, which traveled into the fill valve (the thing with a cup on it that slides up and down) in the tank, the same way a leg clot travels up the body and causes a heart attack.
The corrosion no doubt had caused a massive heart attack in the fill valve. I was going to leave it. It was a pretty nifty signature, after all: six hours of a faint, reedy whine until the tank was filled. But Karen would have none of it. "Please fix the tank," she commanded.
I decided not to just replace the fill valve, but the water supply valve and feeder line as well. You have to appreciate the peril inherent in such a decision. Normally it is a job that would take 25 minutes. In the handyman's world, if all goes exactly right, it will take two days and three trips, with potential for ancillary dilemmas that would fill three pages.
But I am experienced, and my seasoning told me to take all the old parts with me into the store, hand them to a salesperson in the plumbing aisle, hope to God they were not too old to have no replacements, and let the salesperson fill my arms with the necessary new parts. This is exactly what happened. At home, I spread the parts out on the kitchen table and read everything twice.
In the bathroom, I spread the instructions on the toilet seat and lay the parts on the rug. A very wet rug, by the way, due to minor flooding during disassembly. After 30 minutes and a couple of grave decisions (the true meaning of "finger tight," for example), everything was back together. Outside, then down at the wall, I turned the water back on. Such moments of truth, these tiny errands become. Whoosh! came the water through the new fill valve and into the tank. In seconds the tank was filled, and I adjusted the black cup gizmo to raise the level a little. Then the fill valve clicked closed. Silence. Filled tank. No leaks. I flushed it. It worked.
I replaced the tank lid with a Harrison Ford flourish and went to get a towel to blot up the rug, then turned a fan on the rug to hasten drying. Mission accomplished. Nice evening, good dinner, a little TV, bedtime. Shortly after 1, I woke up and, lying there, heard the sound. Unmistakable, the sound of a toilet running, even if for only one second. Then I heard it again. Again. I tiptoed to the bathroom, lifted the tank lid. No leak, no nothing. Perfect silence. Then: the sound. Loud, standing right there. I jumped.
I left it as it was, hoping Karen would not awaken before daylight. I did not want to be trouble-shooting a toilet with a flashlight. In bed, listening with a sort of aggravated fondness to my signature, I remembered something about the instructions, something about holding the black cup under water. I had not done that during the reassembly. At first light, I arose, fished the instructions out of the garbage, read again about the cup, strode to the bathroom, and held it under water for the prescribed 30 seconds without, I might add, overflowing the tank.
It has been three hours now, and I think I have fixed it. But I won't be comfortable for a couple of days.
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