Strange Vibrations

The vibrating noise in our bathroom just sounded wrong.

My mind, following a well-worn path, immediately went to calamity: It must be water pressure building in a pipe that could soon burst.

I called my working-at-home husband. To avert emergency, he left his home office, walked across the hall, and opened the cabinet doors under the sink. Noting the buzzing was louder, he cleverly turned off the water valve.

*Important background note: Between the two of us we can muster about as much DIY knowhow as the clever squirrel who’s chewed a fairy-door-sized hole in our last three garbage toters.

I blame NYC for our DIY ignorance. As young adults renting apartments in NYC, we were spoiled by having an onsite building Superintendent. If anything was amiss, we only had only one call to make. And like a comforting and knowledgeable uncle, the “Super” would appear at the door with some tools to set things right again.

In fact, after one particularly unfortunate plumbing episode, my Super left us with an incantation that still works like magic: “Lilla’ bit, flush ‘em”.

But the vibrating continued.

“Call a plumber”, came the familiar go-to.

I imagined the conversation with a plumber: “Something near our bathroom sink is buzzing and we don’t know why. We’re afraid something could burst.” Followed by the $175 emergency trip charge.

So while my inner child was screeching “DO SOMETHING!” to stop the annoying bathroom buzzing, my inner adult struggled to contain the hysterical child.

I hesitated to call a plumber for another moment, hoping to figure out a clear course of action with my one working brain cell that wasn’t caught up in the ruckus. Standing in the bathroom, I listened to the buzzing, vibrating sound. It was consistent, unchanging. Turning off the water had made no difference. I attempted to distract myself by putting away clothes. Hmmm. This is just so odd, I thought.

My husband, having exhausted all of his moves on the water turn off, retreated to his computer, likely to seek solace in his mostly predictable and orderly corporate world.

But clearly, the buzzing, or possible bursting, and any associated ensuing damage, was on me to resolve.

Returning to the bathroom a few minutes later, I opened the top drawer to get a nail file. And the buzzing got a lot louder.

That’s when I noticed my electric toothbrush, switched on, vibrating in the drawer.

My inner adult and inner child, both relieved, looked at each other and burst out laughing.