To Flush or Not to Flush

Overheard the other night, Hana shouting at her cousin Leah: "Don't flush the toilet"

Leah: "What?"
Hana: "Don't flush the toilet!"
L: "Why?"
H:"If you are just going to pee, don't flush because I'm going right after you"

I didn't see Leah's face directly but I could just picture it getting a bit scrunched up, wondering why her French cousin would ask NOT TO FLUSH the toilet, thereby overtly breaking a sacred, always-abiding groundrule of a US household - to ALWAYS flush the toilet!

I have personally always trained my kids to always flush the toilet. To do otherwise would be - well, so French! You see, one of the horrors of French living that I faced early on is that they do not always flush the toilet. And they are proud of it. When I first faced the murky waters one morning, PeeWee told me that he didn't want to wake me up during the night. I told him rather flippantly that I wake up ANYWAY if he gets up to go to the toilet, so the flushing sound would be the least of my nuisances. He learned his lesson (he used to be so easily trainable!) and has now adopted the American way of flushing every time.

Now, after this episode with PeeWee, I assumed that it was a one-time thing with him and him only. Boy was I in for a surprise when his parents paid us a visit. I woke up to find, yes, murky waters again. I of course immediately confronted PeeWee. He sheepishly replied that his parents didn't want to wake us. I told him in no uncertain terms that to be awakened in the middle of the night by the flushing is music to my ears compared to waking up to find a non-clean toilet in the morning. I'm not sure what he relayed back to his parents, but I think something got lost in translation because this was a recurring theme during their many visits.

When I spent some time at PeeWee's parents' house, I woke up in the morning to find the toilet - well, used - and I laid out a big sigh, resigning myself to these quirks of the Merlet side of the family.

Then I was in for a shock. We had a friend of PeeWee's come visit and lo and behold, the same thing happened. I knew the guy pretty well so I asked him to explain himself and he said, "I didn't want to wake you up". A second visitor, a female this time, did the same thing and offered up the same explanation. I was at a loss. When I visited my good friend M in Paris, she said her (French) husband never flushes at night either. Then recently, I was talking with a mom friend at drop-off, and she said she had to rush home because she had to wait for the plumber and it's a real shame that her toilet decided to break down in the morning because it is already full from all the night time output.

HELLO?

Are you as stunned as I was? Do you find yourself asking -how can an entire population of a developed country be programmed to never flush the toilet in the night time? Was there like a national civic campaign urging people not to flush after, say, 9pm? Did they spin it as an economical energy conservation effort? Or just a common Gallic courtesy effort?

I wonder what the French say of us - "I couldn't believe it when I was awaken at 1am by Rae flushing her toilet! Can you believe it?" Us - wasteful, disrespecting Americans, flushing just like that, so nonchalantly, so carelessly - the nerve!

Now the fact that Hana was exhibiting that Frenchness is a bit of a mystery to me. I always ask her to flush the toilet, but clearly someone has told her it's okay for a toilet to receive two (or more?? gasp!) different outputs before flushing. I wonder if that someone is PeeWee, asserting his Frenchness on the sly. Hmmmm,...