Leilani takes on one heckuva screw

And Leilani wins.

Stuck down under the flywheel of Leilani’s garbage disposal, wedged between its outer rim and the shredder, was one little screw. Jammed in so tight that no amount of turning the crank on the bottom of the disposal or pushing at the flywheel from the top of disposal would so much as make that little guy shiver, the screw’s mean philip’s-head face laughed at Leilani for days.

It was amazing she even identified the wily little culprit responsible for the paralysis of her disposal. She had thought a bone, maybe, a piece of popcorn was jamming the machine. . . and for days she struggled to get that flywheel to turn, to rotate the crank on the bottom with her allen’s wrench and push at the blades from the top with a spoon in order to pop the imagined organic kernel of trouble from its hiding place. But no . . . nothing would work, not even the strong arm of Mark Morales.

Then one afternoon while the girls were watching Bambi, Leilani reached into the disposal with her bare hands (having disconnected the power, of course), and felt around in the entrails of her unit until. . . . until . . . she had to move bits of raw meat and old eggshell out of her way . . . until . . her fingers came across something round, sharpish, hard as a nail. She turned her little flashlight on and peered down into the mouth of her sink, across the chasm of disposal space. Lo and behold, that nasty little screw, smiling its mean little criss-cross smile.

So she wrangled with it, poked at it with its mortal enemy, the screw driver, tried desperately to rotate the wheel just a hair to buy some space with which to unwedge the little bastard, but the little bastard just dig his heels in all the harder.

Finally, thanks to the technology of the web, Leilani found a picture of the inside of a disposal. It’s like two little wheels, the things you see turning, rotating on top of a bigger wheel, the fly wheel, which grinds everything up against the grooved cylinder walls that house it.

She went and spoke to the plumber at Orchard. “That’s a tough one, lady,” he said with a slow, ominous shake of his head. “Do everything you can to get it out of there, or you will have to dissemble the entire unit.”

“What does the entail?” she asked, fearing that such extreme measures just might be necessary.

“You don’t even want to know,” said the Orchard guy. Another customer, standing to the side awaiting his turn for consult, nodded sympathetically.

Well, Leilani thought, time to get down and dirty. She worked and worked under the sink and managed, with one final heaving twist of her shoulder (which still hurts), to detach the disposal from the flange of the sink. Now what? Now she could master it, she could look around, she could face her foe on a more level playing field. He could no longer trust to the awkward lack of leverage afforded by the sink; he could no longer hide beyond the shadows created by the sink’s narrow little drain.

She put the disposal between her legs and thrust her flashlight into its opening. There it was, the little bastard. Smiling, like I said before.

“It’s just you and me, now, little guy,” she whispered. “No more hiding behind old chunks of meat. No more mocking me from beyond the reach of my fingertips and the clutches of my tools. Your time is up, my friend.”

Leilani gripped her trusty screwdriver, its dark bakelite handle becoming one with her hand. Revelling in her greater leverage, she penetrated the disposal and jammed the tool between the flywheel and the grinder. She heaved and hoed and heaved and hoed, ever so gradually making a little more space around the shaft of the screw. Then she saw her chance. She fingered her needle-nose pliers. She wedged their tips around that smug little head, she closed her eyes, and she yanked hard.

KAPOW. In one fell swoop, her hand–its knuckles bloodied by exit wounds–and the pliers emerged from the mouth of the disposal. She looked into the jaws of her tool. There it was, sure enough. That darn screw, pinned in her clutches, looking helpless, even pathetic, in the clear dawn of the kitchen light.

“That’ll teach you to screw with me,” she said triumphantly, as she reinstalled the machine, plugged it back in, and hit the switch. The motor purred for her like a newborn kitten, its happy insides free to grind away at will.