high maintenance

I've just had an awkward visit from a maintenance guy at my apartment complex.  I had called in a work order because the garbage disposal suddenly stopped working yesterday.  Just emitted a short putt-putting sound and then gone quiet.

He knocked on my door timidly, shyly -- less Jehovah's Witness, more Girl Scout cookies salesperson.

The name tag sewn on the front of his coveralls read "Jorge."

"Hello, Hor-hay," I said brightly.

"It's 'George,' but hello," he responded.

My cultural sensitivity thus rebuffed, I led him into the kitchen and demonstrated the silent disposal switch.  George then immediately realized my worst nightmare by sticking his hand down the drain with the switch still in the 'on' position. 

Who does that?! 

Has he never woken drenched in terrified sweat from a hideous nightmare of fishing around down an apparently dormant garbage disposal only to have some bucktoothed little brat somewhere else in the building plug in his PS3, a seemingly innocent move that somehow trips a signal for the disposal to start up and turn the unwitting hand down the drain into a tendon smoothie?

Whatever this guy's first name was, his middle name was obviously "Dumb Fuck."  Or, maybe "Ill-Fitting Pants," which I considered as he bent down and opened the cabinets below the sink to tinker with the disposal chassis. 

My horror at his insufficient belt strength, however, quickly turned to embarrassment at my own stupidity.  George suddenly stood up, adjusted himself, then stuck his hand down the sink drain once more.  He made a quick scooping movement and then his thankfully unmangled hand emerged, clutching a gigantic white wad of what looked like paper towels.

"Plastic bag!" he shouted in triumph.  He then turned and looked at me with both eyebrows raised, brandishing the wet bag clump in my direction. "WHA' HAPPEN HERE?!"

He didn't really wait for my answer; just shook his head slightly, deposited the blockage into the trash can near the sink and then turned to fill out his work order receipts. 

He handed me my copy with a knowing grin on his face, the kind of grin you get when you spy an old Asian lady behind the wheel of a car and she fulfills all your racist but totally true expectations by leaving the left blinker on for three miles and then knocking over the mailbox as she careens into her driveway.  You would have thought he was a triumphant emergency room resident who'd extracted a gerbil from a body cavity or something, based on how damn smug he was.

So I thanked him for his help and showed him the door.  After he left, I stared intently at the soaked, slightly shredded white plastic bag sitting forlornly in the trash.  The sad little bag looked like a prop reject from that stupid scene in American Beauty where the unibrow kid creams himself over wind patterns' effects on litter. 

Finally I realized what had happened through a series of forensic reenactments and the sheer power of my own deductive reasoning.

The plastic bag must have been one of the many layers of odor-prophylactic coverings in which my frozen mahi mahis from the other night's fish taco dinner had been wrapped...

I had been attempting to speed up the defrosting process by running a continuous stream of hot water from the tap over the fish block in the sink...

Unfortunately, the fish block and its wrappings had formed a water-tight seal over the drain...

which had caused the water to back up in the sink and ultimately overflow onto the counters and floor... 

The resultant flood in the kitchen had taken a good quarter hour to mop up, during which time I must not have noticed that one of the fish bags must have come loose from the fish itself and been sucked down into the depths of the drain!

Just the sort of non-unusual everyday occurence that could happen to anyone.  Don't know why Hor-hay had to make such a big stink about it.