We’d already called Roy the Plumber who said he could be at our house first thing in the morning.

But tonight, we had a problem. The toilet was stuffed like a beef knish at Katz’s Deli. Some unseen object, seemingly the size of my 16-pound dog was clogging up the pipes. In fact, I went downstairs to check on her to make sure it wasn’t actually her in there. It wasn’t, thank God.

I explained to my dog, Glennie, what was going on with the upstairs toilet. She shrugged her furry shoulders as if to say “I will never understand what you humans see in those things. Just go on the neighbour’s lawn fer Chrissakes”.

But I digress.

The toilet.

Ruth had already tried all the conventional methods to no avail. I had to go in. I knew if I didn’t, the next morning I’d be looking at a $350 bill from Roy the Plumber, and I’d also be looking at the crack of his ass leaning over my toilet.

So, me, a Jew who has never replaced a carburetor, never split a log with an axe, or stayed in a three-star or less hotel. Me, who has never made a chair with my own two hands, much less stood on one to change a lightbulb.

Me. I was going in.

To paraphrase George Costanza in the whale episode, I won’t lie to you, friends. I was terrified. But I pressed on. As I made my way through the tiled morass of porcelain, I felt a strange calm come over me. I don’t know if it was divine intervention… or the kinship of all living things, but in that moment… I WAS… ROY THE PLUMBER.

Armed with only a pair of yellow rubber gloves and a wire hanger contraption I’d MacGyvered from a hack that I picked up from a youtube video, I attacked the dreaded bathroom fixture. The water bubbled and gurgled from the baking soda and vinegar concoction that Ruth had poured in earlier. It was an angry throne, people.

I’ll spare you the scatological details and just say, it wasn’t a pretty scene.

But I persevered.

Get ready for the poker analogy because you know it’s coming.

That toilet three-bet me from the button, slow-played pocket aces, relentlessly attacked my big blinds. That toilet threw everything it had at me.

But in poker and in plumbing, sometimes you just gotta look your adversary in the eye (or bowl) and say “Enemy, you may have won some battles… BUT I AM WINNING THIS WAR”.

And that’s what I did.

I generated pressure and I cleared the way and that’s what exactly I’ll have to do this weekend when I go to Montreal to play in The Canadian Poker Championships at Playground Poker.

I’ll let you make your own joke about a royal flush.

Cards fly Saturday morning.

Please stay tuned.

By the way, whether I win or lose in Montreal is financially immaterial now. I will soon be wealthy beyond my dreams. I’m starting a Youtube channel called “JEW KNOW-HOW” (alternative pronunciation “DJ’YOU KNOW HOW?”) where I and other mechanically disadvantaged men of the Hebrew faith attempt to perform basic household chores that gentiles could do in their sleep while holding a beer. C’mon now. You know you’d watch that show. It’s objectively brilliant.

Don’t bother stealing it, I’ve already secured the rights.