Into the Jaws of the Unknown Problem

Absurd knows no bounds. 'Specially in my career field.

Take one day not so unrecent (see what I just kinda did there?): a radio call to respond to a hotel room on an "unknown problem".

You could start by analyzing what constitutes an "unknown problem": if it's unknown, how does one know it's a problem? Do we ever get calls to respond to an unknown solution? And if we do, will we recognize it for what it isn't, to find the utility in what it is?

But I digress.

As I neared the location to which my presence had been requested, I could hear a 'buzz' of voices. And faintly...eerily...something that sounded almost akin to background noise. No...it was background music. Music that sounded vaguely familiar. Low...ominous. The closer I got, the more I heard.

The *TOING* of familiarity hit me as I arrived on scene at The Room. Therein I beheld a housekeeper. Her supervisor. A seemingly bemused-looking engineer. And one of my officers who had preceeded me on the call. The call that brought me to respond to an unknown problem.

All the while, that familiar music was playing ever louder...ever faster...building to a crescendo of a climax.

"What's the unknown problem?" I asked in that southern drawl I like to fake that I have, when sounding folksy is particularly non sequitur to the issue, whatever it is.

"It's there!" my officer muttered, gesturing toward the bathroom.

At the commode.

The music rises, like a leviathan from the depths, faster and faster as it nears the surface...

I looked, with a curious lack of trepidation, into the depths of from whenst or wherest everyone seemed to think the aquatic Apocalypse was about to rise in righteous fury from.

The background music was reaching a fever pitched crescendo. And there, I saw...IT:

....

....

....

And there, confronted by IT, someone behind me asked in a manner that was totally serious:

"What do we DO about it?"

As the music reached it's thunderous climax.....*FLUSH*

The four-inch-long dead goldfish was no longer a threat to humanity.

As the background music now faded, sounding like a cat chasing a mouse across a piano keyboard, and with a laconic "unknowd problem solve-d", I left the others to ponder what they had just witnessed, while imagining the image of Chief Brody, somewhere, yelling, "that's IT? THAT'S all it took? We didn't need a bigger boat?"

Not this time, Chief.

Who said that protecting and serving can't be absurdly fun, sometimes?