Where Is My Toilet?

(an old monologue last performed maybe in 2002 or 2003?)

I mosey out to the mic, wiping my brow with a handkerchief. I do my best to muster up a Southern accent…

Thank you very much your honor. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, before I begin I just want to thank you for the patience you’ve shown throughout the course of this trial. I hope you can find it in your hearts to extend the same patience during my closing arguments.

I consult my notes briefly.

“Where is my toilet?”

These were the words of 72 year old Florence Pendleton as she peered down through the hole in her bathroom floor. The hole where her toilet had been just moments earlier. These were her last words.

“WHERE is my toilet?”

These were the last words of grandmother of sixteen Florence Pendleton as she stared down through this sudden hole in her bathroom floor, and met the confused gaze of downstairs neighbor Gene Conroy, who was flipping through an issue of Entertainment Weekly as he took care of his usual morning business on his own toilet, which had done the normal thing and NOT vanished into thin air.

“WHERE IS MY TOILET?!”

These were the last words of church choir member and ASPCA volunteer Florence Pendleton, as she stared down through this sudden hole in her bathroom floor. People in the neighborhood called her the Puppy Rescue Lady, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. She rescued puppies! And “where is my toilet” where her last words, as her toilet, which had disappeared just moments earlier, reappeared suddenly! But not in its God given place, against the wall between the shower and the sink. Oh no! It reappeared here (point to chest)! With a sickening CRUNCH! Halfway between her sternum and her clavicle. Killing her instantly, and obliterating her frail body as if it were a pinata.

(NOTE: How the heck do I make that little wavy sign over the n?)

“Oh, there it is.”

Perhaps that was the last thought that went through Florence Pendleton’s head as it tumbled down through the hole in the bathroom floor and landed in Gene Conroy’s lap, smack dab in the middle of a Jennifer Love Hewitt photo spread. We’ll never know. All we know is that Gene Conroy can no longer look at an issue of Entertainment Weekly without screaming in terror. Heck, I have the same problem.

But I digress.

You’ve all heard this story earlier, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.You’ve heard countless stories throughout the course of this trial, all of them with one common thread. One calamitously unfortunate, misguided invention: The Constantly Randomly Teleporting Toilet. Introduced in 1997 by the Sumitomi Amalgamated Chemical Corporation, the CRTT was touted as “the end of toilet tedium.” But it proved disastrous. For once it was flushed, it became irrevocably activated, and it began to – what else? Teleport. Constantly, and randomly. Now, SumAlChemCor wisely recalled the toilet almost as soon as it hit the market, but not before 11 of those units were purchased and activated. Those eleven constantly randomly teleporting toilets have caused massive amounts of death and destruction as they’ve teleported to and fro across the globe, and they continue to do so to this day! That is why I am asking that you award the sum of 500 million dollars to my clients and their families, for the toilet-related loss and trauma that they have experienced.

Why would anyone invent a toilet that constantly randomly teleports? I don’t know, I’m a simple man. The only thing that I ever “invented” was a popsicle-stick spatula for my father when I was five years old. Oh, I knew my old man liked to barbecue burgers on the grill, and I made him a popsicle-stick spatula. He knew it would burst into flames as soon as he tried to use it, but he used it anyway. As he was recovering from the third degree burns on his arms, he assured me that it had all been the fault of the black man.

But I digress.

You’ve heard countless terrible stories, ladies and gentlemen. You’ve heard the story of Karen Cooperwitz, whose daughter Shelby’s Bat Mitzvah was shockingly interrupted by the appearance of a toilet right in the middle of the uh…the um, the yellow bread. Halvah? Chupa? Perhaps one of my Jewish collegues can…

(audience member invariably shouts Challah, which I continue to mispronounce despite their help)

Halvah? Chall-Ha? Choopa? Again, I’m sorry – I mean the yellow bread. A toilet appeared right in the middle of the yellow bread just as Grandma Esther was preparing to cut it! And then it disappeared just as suddenly, leaving a ruined, um…halvah? La-cha? Again, I’m sorry. Leaving ruined yellow bread and and a wet, soiled, and terrified Grandma Esther. How terrible, and ironic, and terribly ironic that the sudden appearance of a toilet would trigger Grandma Esther’s incontinence? Appearing as if to taunt her, and then leaving her to deal with her own unwanted moisture.

Listen, folks, I’m truly sorry for mispronouncing the yellow bread word. I wasn’t exposed to any other cultures until my third year of law school, when my classmate Prajan Nilapul politely informed me that he was from a country called India, and not a tanning booth addict, as I had suspected. To this day, I truly regret the intervention I staged on his behalf. And I gave that poor man so many bottles of aloe.

But I digress.

Let me take a poll here. When you go to the bathroom, for ladies this will be all the time, for men, just numero dos. When you go to the bathroom, there comes a time in the preparatory proceedings when you must turn your back to the toilet. You must turn your back to the toilet and have faith. And you don’t keep turning around, do you? You don’t keep wheeling around, mumbling to yourself, “is it still there? Is the toilet still there?” No, when you sit down you fully expect that cold porcelain to touch your heinie! You don’t expect to fall ass backwards onto the floor, smack dab into that rancid patch of bathroom floor that, until just now, had been hidden in the corner between the toilet and the sink. That little, furry, fuzzy, dusty, stinking piece of bathroom floor! The piece of bathroom floor that now bears more of a resemblance to the skin of a kiwi fruit than it does floor tile! You don’t expect to fall naked ass backwards onto that!

WHY! Why would anyone in their right mind, uh…invent a TOILET that CONSTANTLY, RANDOMLY TELPORTS? I don’t know! I’m a simple man. Heck, before I had a financial advisor, I kept all my money in my dog, Rex.Oh yeah, he was a fine hunting dog when he was alive, but he made an even better piggy bank we he died. My family taxidermist fixed it so that I put the money in through a screwtop head, and to make a withdrawal I just had to pull down on the tail.

But I digress.

You’ve seen the 1998 photograph of President Clinton shaking hands with Tony Blair as a toilet hovers in the background ominously.

You’ve HEARD the 1999 bootleg recording of an Aerosmith concert in which, during the song Sweet Emotion, a toilet suddenly appeared in Steven Tyler’s mouth. Luckily, he was unharmed.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do you know where your toilet is? Do you? I do. We are the lucky ones. Those eleven Constantly Randomly Teleporting Toilets are still out there, teleporting to and fro wreaking havoc across the globe. One of them could appear anytime, anywhere. Maybe even right here right NOW! (look around frantically).

But probably not.

I urge you to find in favor of my clients. You’ve got a tough call to make here, but you gotta do it – like a golden retriever who knows there’s a tennis ball wedged somewhere under that couch, but whose snout is just a little too thick to get at it, you gotta keep trying. How you gonna get that tennis ball, ladies and gentlemen of the jury? How you gonna get that tennis ball? Thank you, I rest my case.