My family and I were returning from our annual visit to Everglades National Park, Florida, chugging along in our RV as we headed for Miami. Reed after reed, heron after heron...each mile of the drive was becoming monotonously reminiscent of the pervious one, so my parents decided it was time for us to get out and stretch our legs. 

We stopped at a ticky-tacky joint called Coopertown Airboat. There was a gravelly loop full of cars with tags from here to Tennessee and ruddy people in tank tops and shorts. Tourists. Suddenly my velvet prairie skirt and embroidered peasant top seemed oddly elegant here and my sisters’ pseudo-punk duds came off as surreally alien. Red hens bobbed around the bait shop and the restaurant that served gator steak and frog legs, but I was afraid that if I chased the cock-a-doodlers, they’d scatter into the road and get run over. At the end of the property farthest from the parking lot, there were tanks brimming with baby alligators and confused turtles just next to the airboat dock. A sunburned man dressed insultingly like Crocodile Dundee smiled, teeth pushing past smokers’ lips as he asked my father if we were interested in a ride. No, we weren’t. Thank you.

“I hafta use the bathroom,” my littlest sister Sherri whined as she made comically skittish movements. Uh-oh. Surely we were witnessing one of the tell-tale symptoms of a bad case of Gotta Go Right Now. 

“Well, go in there.” My mother motioned toward the restaurant. As always, this kind of thing turned into an entire family excursion, so the five of us (Mom, Dad, my sister Roxie, my sister Sherri, and a reluctant me) scrambled into the seedy gator burger place. We opened the screen door and walked right in. 

The room---because that’s all it was---was as short and narrow. One the left side was a cash register nestled among alligator tooth necklaces, dried alligator feet, and Glow in the Sun T-shirts. Alligator heads were pegged to the wall like safari treasures and turtle shells hung from the ceiling. It was like a museum, but instead of the stench formaldehyde, the stink of grease and sweat slammed us. Yum. 

My father offered my mother a menu while I accompanied Sherri into the bathroom. With sheer class---ahem, or lack of----possessed by this little hole in the bog, I was scared of the commode lurking behind the WOMEN’s door. I somehow convinced Sherri to enter first.

“Is it okay in there?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

I crept in, annoyed that there was only one toilet, but not surprised. Sherri diligently padded the toilet with hand towels, careful that not a millimeter of the seat was bare.  I admired myself in the cracked mirror as she sat down to do her business. She shortly announced that it was my turn. I went to the toilet, and clucked my tongue at all the paper towel she had let fall into the toilet bowl. 

“This is going to clog,” I chided. But she wasn’t listening. She was washing her hands and humming along to the song playing on her iPod.  “Whatever,” I mumbled and padded the toilet for myself. 

Once I was finished, I threw my toilet paper into the trash can and tried to flush the paper Sherri had let fall into the bowl. 

“Hurry up,” Sherri said, “I wanna go look at the pencils. They had plastic alligators on them.”

“I can’t.” 

“Huh?”

“Take those stupid ear-buds out of your ears!” 

She did as instructed. “What’s the matter? Why can’t you flush the toilet?”

“Because you let these paper towels into the toilet---I tried telling you that before.”

“Oh. So? Just leave it.”

“We can’t just leave it, Sherri. That’s...rude!”

“Well, it’s not like this is some fancy place or anything.”

“That’s not the point. We’re not leaving any money here, so the least we can do is clean up after ourselves after using their can.”

“Fine, but there’s no reason to get all uptight about it, Hannah.”

“Psssh, at least I have the courtesy to de-clog the toilet.”

Sherri had plugged her ear-buds back in again and was repeatedly pushing the lever. “It’s not working!”

“I TOLD YOU IT WOULDN’T.”

“Well, where’s a toilet plunger?”

I turned around, my eyes scanning the cobwebbed corners of the room. ‘There,” I said. The toilet plunger was propped into some kind of case with a flimsy door. I didn’t want to touch the door because it looked so filthy, so I just shook the plunger until the case fell off. Victory. 

I handed the plunger to my sister who glared at me and then snatched it away from me. “This is so disgusting.” She threw the plunger into the bowl and pushed it up and down until the paper towel popped out of the hole. She tried re-flushing the paper, but it still wouldn’t disappear into the depths of Florida Pipesville. “Fantastic.” She re-plunged the toilet and almost raised the plunger over the trashcan to rid herself once and for all of the paper, but it flopped right back into the bowl. 

“Let me show you how this is done.” I seized the plunger from her, scooted the paper onto the side of the bowl and flushed until all of the water was gone. 

Now came the challenging part. I repeatedly pressed the plunger onto the hunk of paper, got it stuck on, and then lifted the plunger from the bowl only to have the paper plunk back down before I could reach the trash can, which was positioned a mere two inches away from the toilet. 

“This is ridiculous,” I snapped. At this point, Sherri was laughing hysterically and was having so a good time that she even plucked her ear-buds out of her ears so she could focus all her attention on my failure. I glared at her and then barked, “Lean the trashcan against the toilet.” She raised an eyebrow but slanted the trashcan against the bowl, anyway. 

This time I was ready. Really ready. I was an aquatic huntress on the prowl, spear in hand, adrenaline shooting through my veins. The sea slug shimmied into a coral cave, hoping it could escape me---but I knew the ocean too well. And the sea slug would not live a day longer. 

POP! I trapped the bundle of paper beneath the plunger and squished out some of it water to make it lighter. Once it was light enough for my purposes, I removed the plunger from over it and then used the edge of the plunger like a broom, sweeping the paper to the rim of the bowl. Almost there, I thought to myself. I took a deep breath and then in a single motion, I brushed the paper into the trashcan. 

“We did it!” Sherri and I shouted. I dropped the plunger so I could give her a hearty high-five. 

Sherri grabbed a piece of paper towel to wipe the toilet seat clean. Then we both washed out hands and exited the bathroom, and since the rest of our family was nowhere to be seen in the restaurant, we kept walking right out the front door. 

Our sister Roxie was skipping stones with our parents at a pond beside the parking lot, waiting for us. 

“What took you so long?” Mom asked. 

“Erm...” I glanced at Sherri who turned the other way. “Nothing.”

“Okay, good,” Dad said, “Let’s go.”

And so we did. But I didn’t leave without one final glance at my hunting ground. Bye-bye, sea slug.