The Kitchen Sink

Two guys walk into a bar and one of them looks down to see he’s not wearing any pants.

This isn’t the start of joke, or a reminder that No Pants Day is observed on the first Friday in May--I'm sure you already knew that--but rather a scene from a nightmare that came hopping out of my hippocampus late last week.

This is a story of fear, confusion, a runaway faucet, and the crankiest plumber in creation.

The dream starts off with me riding around in a car with a guy I hadn’t seen in over a year through the streets of some cartoon version of New York.

Somewhere along the way I spot an old-time police car with a bubble light and fins, prowling through the streets. But the vehicle was heavily armored in a strange way that defied reality—which dreams tend to do.

We get to the bar and I’m wearing this bulky turtleneck sweater that’s weighing me down like a bearskin rug.

Everything seemed to be okay until I happened to look south of the border and then—ay, caramba!---I was wearing only boxer shorts

I know it’s pointless to look for logic in a dream, but nevertheless it irks me that I hadn’t noticed my lack of trousers during the ride over to the bar.

I was mortified beyond description, of course, and I ran into the bathroom at one point to hide.

When I finally emerged from the loo, I found my friend cheerfully chatting up other patrons while I stood isolated in the middle of crowd—and nobody seemed to notice my pants-less predicament.

And that’s all I remember.

I believe the genesis of this desperate delusion stems from an incident earlier in the day in the real world when I noticed my kitchen faucet sink was steadily leaking.

I tried to tighten the handle, and then the floodgates were quite literally opened as an unstoppable stream of liquid hell came of surging out of the nozzle.

I dove beneath the sink and discovered that the knob that's supposed to shut of the water was inoperable.

Water Torture

Now I was really freaking. I asked my landlady to call a plumber, but her regular guy was out of town, so she called Roto-Rooter, which couldn’t get someone over until 2 pm.

It’s amazing how loud a stream of water can become if it goes on for enough time. The endless droning echoed throughout my apartment and probably the whole building.

Believe me when I tell you that it wasn’t easy to work under these conditions.

When the plumber finally did show up, he looked at me like I was the village idiot for not turning the water off below the sink. Until he tried to do it himself.

“You got a wrench?” he asked.

I was bit taken aback. You’re the plumber, dude, what are you asking me for?

I'm not a very handy guy and my toolkit is pretty much nonexistent, so I gave him something that was either a wrench or a nutcracker and let him go to town. No luck.

The guy got to work and quickly discovered that the kitchen pipe was also leaking. He spent a good part of the afternoon making the necessary repairs and dropping f-bombs like he was getting paid per usage.

He seemed to take the problem personally.

I could understand if this were his own house he was working on, but when it’s your job shouldn’t a faulty sink be good news? The more work, the bigger your paycheck.

But perhaps he was offended by the previous plumber’s pernicious lack of professionalism.

In any case, it’s obvious that this daytime disaster sparked my midnight madness. Being undressed or naked in a dream is interpreted as a sign of vulnerability and helplessness. And I surely felt that way when my sink went south.

However, I am still working on the meaning of that armored police car from yesteryear. Maybe the driver was coming a different dream.

The plumber finally wrapped up and cleared out and I returned to something approaching a normal life. I'm happy to report that I’ve got new handles, new pipes, new gears and a brand new hose in my sink.

And the last time I checked I was still wearing pants.