The Faucet Fiasco

Yesterday my kitchen faucet began to go on the fritz—emitting an uneven and crooked downpour. I didn’t think much of it at first, but by the time I got around to cooking dinner it had gotten really bad. The tap water came out practically sideways, so that the only safe water pressure was a tiny trickle. Each time I went to the sink I’d discover the failing faucet anew, and get a nice little spray in the stomach and out over my counter and floor. Frustrated, I began poking and prodding at the little

screen up in the spout, alternately turning the water all the way up and all the way down, to little effect. The spray didn’t even change directions—it just kept on at a Southeasterly slant (if I were facing North)—and finally I gave up and went back to cooking.

I must’ve done this little dance three or four times: turn on the faucet and get sprayed a little, watch in disgust as water spatters over my cutting board and onto the floor, turn the tap off, turn it on gingerly and poke away at its mouth with increasingly violent stabs, curse the stupid thing, give up.

I’d had a trying day. I had spent four hours on a big canvas that came out real bad, and made me want to puke every time I peeked into the living room for another look. I offer this by way of explanation, because by the end of the night I was totally fed up and saying things like “I’ll f***ing kill you” to my faucet.

Fortunately for the faucet, I finally calmed down, ate my dinner, and when washing the dishes and cleaning my brushes, I accepted the slow, non-spraying drizzle as it was and went to sleep without further confrontation.

This morning I got up, saluted the sun, and walked into the kitchen. I went straight to the faucet, looked at it carefully for a moment, gripped it firmly by the tip, and twisted. The spout came off with just a few turns, and inside I found the waxy plastic insert with a tiny hole in the middle. Without hesitating, I grabbed a toothpick from the stove and pried the seal off, revealing a mass of little soaked twigs clogging the screen. I flipped the insert over, ran it under the free-flowing tap, picked out the last stubborn twigs, replaced the seal, screwed it back on, and tested the tap. Straight down and under high pressure it poured, looking and sounding exactly how a good faucet ought to.

I was elated! I felt like a genius! Glad not to be sprayed by an ineffectual faucet, I was also grateful to be spared the disappointed look of the friendly Mexican maintenance man who would surely fix my faucet faster than I could stand beside him and explain when the problem started and how bad it had gotten and how I’d tried poking it from below but that didn’t seem to work.

Sometimes a good night of sleep makes all the difference.