Travel back in time with me to the summer of 1993.
I was just wrapping up a three year stint as the head of the Armed Forces Radio and Television station at Sigonella, Sicily. My wife, now ex, and myself had been packing for weeks, excited about my tour of duty in Philadelphia, Pa., as a recruiting district public affairs officer and bringing my newborn son home. We’d shipped most of our household goods already. The furniture was gone, car shipped, most of our clothes.
Since we were leaving in two days, we were making the final sweep around the apartment at about 10 p.m. We had to vacate the premises by 8 a.m. and would spend our last night in a hotel. The ex passed by the bathroom and told me to take down the shower curtain and pack it.
We had nothing to stand on, so I hiked myself up on the toilet seat and proceeded to unhook the curtain from the rings.
A moment of digression, if you’ll indulge me. Italian toilets are not like American toilets. The bowls are narrower, their rims are higher off the floor. While many toilet seats in America are made of laminated wood or sturdy plastic, the seats and lids of Italian toilets are made of flimsy, semi-rigid plastic.
As I stood on the seat, leaning over, I felt the seat cover buckle. It went from convex to concave but still supported my weight. The next part of the story comes from the ex’s observations, ‘cause I don’t remember this part.
She was in the kitchen feeding Skirmie when she heard a crack, yell and thud. She set down my son, ran into the bathroom and began screaming. Alerting our downstairs neighbors, who happened to be Navy corpsmen.
The lid had snapped in two lengthwise. I dropped straight down and my foot crunched through the bottom of the toilet all the way to the sub-floor. The bowl cracked and all the water had run out, now tinged red from my blood. I laid on my side, unconscious as blood spouted from a wound in my foot up out of the bowl onto the back wall (The next day I hobbled into the bathroom and the blood was easily 4 ft. up the wall!). My knee was twisted at an impossible angle as my foot was impaled on the jagged porcelain at the bottom of the bowl.
My downstairs neighbor had run up. He helped my ex pull me out of the shitter, apply direct pressure and got me down the stairs to our car. His wife remained with my son.
We had a Seat Cinque-cento, a very small car with a 500 cc engine. We’d sent our American car home already! They got me in the back seat, my wife drove and Jason attended to me. I remember a little of the 40 minute drive to the hospital.
Once at the hospital they asked my wife what happened.
“He fell in the toilet!” They about busted their ribs laughing.
Anyway, to make a long story short (too late), they sewed up a nick in an artery, installed a drain, shot me up with all kinds of drugs to prevent sepsis, and sewed me up – laughing the entire time! My plight eventually was written up and used as an example for bathroom safety in a Navy-wide newsletter.
They held on to me until about 1000. My wife had to leave, cause our land lord was to inspect our apartment at 0800. He about fainted when he saw the bathroom. He told my wife we’d have to clean the entire bathroom and replace the toilet before he would sign our paperwork! No paperwork, no flight home!
So I get discharged. We try to check into a hotel. I’m confined to a wheel chair and the first thee hotels won’t accept me. They don’t want to deal with the liability. I finally make an imposition to another friend and we move in for the evening.
I say, fuck the wheelchair, and start to hobble about. I still had to get up to the apartment to get the paperwork signed. By now my foot is numb from all the pain from trying to hobble around. I borrow a set of crutches. I get there, throw a shit load of money at the landlord and he reluctantly signs the paperwork. He seems really nervous. Finally he says, “Senore, you are leaking.”
Apparently he didn’t have in his vocabulary the word for bleeding, ‘cause I had busted my stitches, and was leaving bright red footprints all over the apartment. Another trip to the hospital.
“Why were you up and about?”
“I had to get my toilet fixed before I could leave this blasted island.”
“Are you the guy who took forty stitches after he fell into his toilet?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. They already have the interview sheet the admitting nurse filled out with your wife posted in the lounge. It’s a riot!”
Thank God they don’t issue sidearms in the Navy.
Well, we spend the night. I get wheeled down to the airport. We present our paperwork preparing to board the 18 hour flight.
“I’m sorry sir. You can’t board without note from your doctor saying it’s alright.”
“Don’t move,” I tell the ex. I see another friend of mine in the terminal, tell him I need to borrow his car. He throws me the keys. I get out of the wheelchair, grimacing all the way, walk outside, get into the car and realize it’s a standard! I can’t fucking drive it.
I grab my buddy. He drives me to the hospital like a madman – I’m gonna make this plane!!
We get to the hospital. Get the doctor. Get him to call the gate. Hobble back out to the car. Dash back to the airport. I drop into a wheel chair and he rolls me to the gate. My ex and son are already aboard.
I show my ticket to the stewardess (a civilian contracted plane).
The doctor had apparently called to clear things up because I was greeted with an enthusiastic: “Are you the gentleman who fell into his toilet the day before yesterday? We thought that was a joke!”
“Fuck you very much.”
So get on the plane we take off. 18 hours of cabin compression. I had to sit in the aisle with my foot elevated ‘cause the entire flight was booked.
We land at Philly. I get to be the first person of the plane. They radioed ahead for a skycap to meet us with a wheel chair.
I hobble off.
“Are you the guy who fell in the toilet? That cracked me up!” says the sky cap. Grumbling I look at his nametag for a name to curse: Steve Wentzel.
I say, “My sister is marrying a guy named Bob Wentzel in three weeks!"
“You’re Sandy’s brother? Wait till I tell Bob what happened to you!”
Being wheeled through the airport. Cab ride to Moms. Hobble up to the front door. Ring the bell. Dad opens it.
“Please don’t break my toilets.”
Needless to say, my family has never, and will never, let me live down those two seconds of stupidity.
p.s. The damn shower curtains were too stained with blood to save. We ended up throwing them away.
Note: I originally posted this around the turn of the century.
