How Being Covered In My Own Shit Taught Me Self-Reliance

It builds character. Trust me.

My father has always been a DIY and Fix-It-Yourself (FIY) kind of guy. As a child, it drove me crazy that I had to partake in home repair and renovation projects that my dad undertook on his own, instead of hiring a professional or a contractor.

We built sheds, fixed the roof, painted the house, built patios, laid bricks, built walls, and a bunch of other projects. He probably would have done electrical work had it not been against the law without a permit and a license.

I recall that one incident in which one of my dad’s projects ended up getting me covered not only in my own shit but my entire family's.

The first indication that something was amiss was when flushing the toilet resulted in backflow into our bathtub. It was a beautiful Saturday and I had plans to play baseball with my friends, but my dad had other plans. He conscripted me to help him clear the clog.

We went to the local hardware store and bought a drain-opener bottle, which did absolutely nothing.

My dad borrowed our neighbor's hand-held drain snake. Since the hand-held device was designed to clear out clogs in sinks and just under the toilet, it simply wasn’t long enough to do much good.

We then went to the local hardware store to see if they had bigger tools. My dad described in detail what was wrong and what he had done so far in his heavily accented Japanese English. The hardware store recommended we rent one of their industrial-grade drain snakes that were fifty feet long. These were motor-assisted, which the attendant told us could tear through any obstructions in the pipe.

Satisfied with the option, we hauled the machine back to our house. We crawled under our home to locate the sewage pipe access, and with glee, my dad turned on the device and started to push the snake through the pipe.

Unfortunately…, the fifty-feet was not long enough to hit the mark. We retracted the snake, now completely covered in our family’s wastewater.

While hosing down the device so my dad could return it cleaner than we rented it, my father was in deep thought of his next move.

I too was in deep thought…, I thought to myself:

“Please just call a plumber!”

Just when I hoped my dad finally came to his senses and decided to call a plumber, he said:

“Grab a shovel son, we’re digging a hole.”

Wait…, what, seriously!?!?

So we began to dig just outside of the range of the industrial drain snake, which was at the border of our property and the city sewage pipes. My father was convinced that's where the clog was.

While we were digging, our cities finest drove by. Curious to see what we were doing, he opens his window and politely asked, “Good day! What are you guys doing?”

Dad responds, “Fixing our sewage pipe. It clogged pretty badly”

I confess, I hoped the officer would put a stop to the madness by quoting city ordnance prohibiting digging a hole without a permit, but the officer responded, “Well…, as long you don’t dig on city property. Carry on and good luck, hope you can get it fixed soon, have a wonderful day sir,” waved at us and drove off.

After a few hours of digging and a huge pile of earth next to the hole, we finally found the sewage pipe and the cause of the clog. We discovered that tree roots managed to squeeze themselves in between the coupling. We removed all roots in the surrounding area but needed to dislodge the pipes so that we could remove the roots within the pipes.

“Alright son, stand there and lift your end, and I will lift from my end.”

My dad pointed me to a position on the lower end of the incline, just about five feet from the main sewage line. Had I known what was going to happen next, I would have told my father that we should switch positions.

“On the count of three…, one, two, three… lift”

Everything after that point was like life playing slowly in front of my eyes. The roots clogged all of the toilet paper, which due to gravity had amassed itself as one big solid clump near the roots. But once the pipes were dislodged, the only thing holding back the TP, hundreds of gallons of raw sewage was also removed. The clogged toilet paper came out like toothpaste in a solid white cylindrical tube that crumbled as it hit the dirt. Very slowly at first, then accelerating rapidly as hundreds of pounds of water pressure suddenly had an outlet. I knew what was coming, but I couldn’t do anything about it.

The smell was overwhelming, but worse yet, because I was standing in front of the pipes, I got covered from the waist down with the sewage water cannon. The sewage rapidly filled the hole that I was standing in, and flooded onto the street and into the rain drainage ditch. Luckily that officer wasn’t around to see what has transpired. Nor did any of our neighbors witness the event.

My father and I looked at each other for a few seconds in awkward silence, as we both did our best not to puke. As I stood there in a knee-deep puddle of our family’s sewage, my dad began to laugh hysterically while he stood dry and safe above the edge of the hole, which was now a lake. He then said,

“Before you go back in the house, we need to hose you down. If any of that stuff gets in the house, mom will punish us both!

Oh, and don’t forget to use the side door to get inside and try not to be seen my mom on your way to the bathroom”

I nodded in agreement. We both had healthy fear and respect for mom.

That was the best shower I ever took in my life.

There were many other home improvement and other DIY projects that my dad involved me in. Though as a child, I remember being annoyed at being forcefully encumbered with such menial tasks, I am now eternally grateful for all of the skills that I have acquired through all of the projects that I worked on with my father through childhood.

As a homeowner, I now prefer to do things on my own, just like my dad. I know city ordinances exist to keep idiots safe from themselves, and to ensure things are done correctly, but I still find it annoying that certain jobs require a licensed professional, even if it can be handled by DIYers.

As a father with three young children, I fully intend to force my kids to observe, participate, and learn the way I did. In doing so, I hope that they become self-reliant as they grow older.

Be it home repair and improvement or basic car maintenance, I find that tinkering with things makes you think outside of the box. To me, it's like solving a puzzle through the process of elimination until a workable solution presents itself. I’ve found that I naturally apply this principle to all obstacles and problems I face in life. There is a solution to everything. You just have to take a step back and think outside of the box. I got to observe my father in action; now I hope that my own children also learn through observing me through daily life.

Learning with my father also taught me to be independent. To this day, I hate asking for help. I’d rather figure it out on my own through trial and error, and experimenting, to find a solution that works for me. My father rarely hired a professional to do anything and fixed almost everything on his own, and I have the same mindset. Of course, I research options, but I implement my own way of doing things based on the resources that I have available.

Doing things on your own results in a sense of accomplishment, which builds confidence. I know the limits of my current skills, but I’m willing to take risks to go beyond my current limitations in order to test my own boundaries. This mindset allows me to not only hone my skills but also test my perseverance to see through goals to the end.

Most importantly, it builds character. Trust me…, it does.