Fixin' Leaks and Leeks

Waves the color of a turquoise moon from some romantic movie in a distant (romantic) galaxy, greeted two members of the Fixin’ Leaks and Leeks Team when we arrived for our pre-25^th-wedding-anniversary celebration in Hawaii.

However, all we could think about was the toilet in our room.

You may recall a pre-COVID post about a trip to Kaua’i, where the Fixin’ Leaks and Leeks Team embraced historical sites, documented new experiences about eating delectable dishes, and so forth.

Here’s a link to that post, if you need something a little more substantial than this one. This is not that post.

Sure, I did actually swim in the ocean for the first time in years, we marveled at beautiful textiles and art, and the restaurants were great, and so was the music, and we saw fireworks—and everything was tropical and romantic and amazing—but there was this toilet/bidet in our room.

It was one to write home about.

First, there were the noises: some kind of digital grunting, groaning, grinding—like back in the old timey days when you would burn a CD onto your computer.

Then, there were the constant swishing noises—as if the toilet were alive. And the entire bathroom was warm. Too warm. Like something was taking up the very air you were breathing.

I dared myself to open the lid. The water inside glowed a midnight blue, the kind of blue surfers reminisce about in videos where they recall the day that something “looked off” about the ocean, just before they lost a limb to a Great White shark.

And, to make things worse, there was a remote control mounted to the wall, filled with pictures we didn’t understand. As you can see below, it’s very confusing.

Okay, maybe the first picture at the top is self-explanatory, but then it just gets weird. Will the force of the water from the bidet propel me into a seated position, where I will float above the toilet/bidet in suspended animation?

Further down, what’s with the arrows? Is the Dow Jones rising and falling at the same time while being attacked by a stream of dot-matrix invaders?

And then, there appear to be drawings of cubes, tumbling along a diagonal line that’s moving upwards back into the area that’s attempting to be cleansed. If the “cubes” are condensed roughage, we’re all in trouble.

The square dots and plus and minus signs and up and down arrows, just left me incredibly uneasy. And I’m not sure why the 1 and 2 figures are “absorbed” inside human-like shapes, which leads me to believe this is a two-person bidet? Probably such a thing exists. Anything exists, I suppose, if you special order it.

Of course, Nate and I made jokes that began, “…and the bidet?” just like in this Saturday Night Live skit, which we can’t stop laughing at.

And when we’d approach the toilet, it would make those CD burning noises, as if we had jump-scared it into a cycle, and it needed to re-booty itself all over again.

It left such an impression that all my pictures of the ocean seem like they’re the exact same color of the siren call of the bidet, which I think will always haunt me.

Your Turn: What amenities do you look for when booking a hotel room?