Pushing Buttons

You have a bit of a mishap that you could have so easily avoided.

You then have two choices.

The first is to admit to being at fault and by confessing there may be a better outcome than could be hope for.

The other is to try to cover up ,conceal or just ignore the misdemeanour and that, amazingly, it may mend or resolve itself leaving no clues or indications that you meddled or tampered with the thing in the first place.

That was the quandary that I found myself in just yesterday afternoon in someone's bathroom.

I have always been curious, even from being a young child.

If there was a "Strictly No Admittance" sign on a door then I would, of course, open it.

I touched everything that had a no touching notice.

I always had to check that a warning of wet paint was justified and above all, if there was a button just begging to be pushed then that is what I would do.

In this way I always attracted trouble be it on the bus and that bell stop thing, an old style push in cigarette lighter in a car or the operating button on a pedestrian crossing even if I had no intention of using it. If coming across any type of keyboard at all, either on a shop counter, in a public access office or just lying around, my index finger would get busy.

So, in that person's house bathroom I acted true to form.

The bathtub was an ordinary looking white acrylic thing. A mixer tap, grab rails, plug and hole as per usual.

What caught my attention was an array of silver dots in a seemingly random arrangement in the bottom of the tub. They were squat in form and seemed to be stuck down flush with no apparent apertures or perforations.

I thought that they might be some sort of anti-slip system although of course a rubberised and friction producing material was the norm. I reached down over the bath side and touched one and more of the silver spots. They were metallic and as such no use at all in providing any non-slip characteristics.

As I stood up from this line of investigation I disturbed a large towel that had been draped over the edge and my index finger started to twitch.

There, on the bath surround was a chrome button in a matching surround.

Yes, I had learned hard lessons from my formative years from giving in to temptation where switches and buttons were concerned but my overwhelming sensation at that time was as though an inner voice had given me the go ahead and press. I did so.

The  downward motion was pleasing in that it was smooth and crisp.

Within a few millimetres of depressing the button there came from within the belly of the bathtub the sound of rushing air. It was coming out from beneath those fancy sliver dots.

Of course, the bath was one of those spa types and the pumped air, activated by my action, was coursing out but with no covering of water to give the distinctive bubbling effect.

I had an immediate thought that if the air, under pressure, was churning out freely with no watery resistance to play against then was there a risk that the motorised pump would burn out?

That was a scenario that did not fill me with joy and so I pressed the button again.

Logically I would have said that one push was "on" and another was "off".

Illogically the sound of air just increased in velocity and not to mention in audible noise.

One more push, I thought, should turn the thing off but in fact the speed and volume just ramped up again.

In a bit of a panic I could think of nothing apart from closing the bathroom door so that the homeowner might not hear the racket coming from his upstairs facility.

I tried to listen out for rapid and anxious footsteps on the stairs but the din from the mechanicals was drowning out any background sounds.

Perhaps there had been no real damage or risk of malfunction from my folly but I could have no way of knowing this in the absence of any obvious electric motor scorching smell or audible grinding of mashed gears and moving parts.

I had to just find the owner of the house and admit that I had meddled.

Making my way downstairs I went through a few different scenarios of how the button could have become pushed. I fell over or the pen fell toppled out of my breast pocket causing the action were initially plausible to my frazzled mind but the more I rehearsed them the more ridiculous they sounded.

Hesitantly I made my way downstairs and found the house owner in his conservatory, seemingly oblivious to the war zone one floor up.

I came clean about what my curiosity had made me do and upon returning to the vibrating atmosphere he just pushed the button one more time and peace was restored.

My obvious embarrassment did elicit kindness and understanding from the owner and we did end up having a bit of a laugh about the whole thing.

As I left the house I realised that much of my self inflicted childhood angst and psychological distress could so easily have been avoided.