Bathroom Humor

I reached my peak as a bathroom humorist in The 2000-Pound Goldfish. The goldfish has been flushed down the toilet, into the sewer, where it comes to weigh two thousand pounds and has slurped five or six people to death. The soldiers are marching into the sewer to kill Bubbles, and Warren gets the idea that if everyone in the city flushed their toilets at, say, ten o'clock, the floodgates would open and Bubbles would be swept out to sea “where she could live the rest of her life in peace and harmony.” This is the section I read aloud to kids, and at this point, some intellectual type raises his hand and says, “Mrs. Byers, goldfish can't live in salt water.” I say, “Listen, I'm the boss of this book, and if I want Bubbles to live in salt water, Bubbles will live in salt water.”

There follows a seven-page countdown in which the announcer is entreating listeners to flush their toilets. “It's five minutes to ten. If you have more than one bathroom, get a neighbor to come flush with you.” “It’s four minutes to ten, open your windows, yell ‘Flush!’ to the people in the streets below.” It takes two pages to get everyone in their bathrooms, and the final countdown is “Five-four-three-two-one-FLUSH!” and if I read this correctly, I never have to actually say the word flush, because the entire school will make the sound of a toilet flushing. It may not sound thrilling to you to hear two hundred kids flushing like toilets, but it has never failed to move me.

-Betsy Byars, "Taking Humor Seriously," The Zena Sutherland Lectures, 216-217.