As you may have heard, the city of Minneapolis now encourages residents to "adopt a drain." OK. How? I go down to the Drain Pound, I suppose. If only people would just neuter their drains, we wouldn't have this problem. Oh, sure, they're cute when they're little — you know, the ones that fit in your sink — but then they grow up to the street-corner size, and it's harder to place them with loving families.
Then again, there's nothing like the joy of bringing a drain home for the first time. It's understandably nervous. But then you take it down to the gutter and gently place it in the spot, and sit there for a while, perhaps with a hot water bottle and a ticking clock to make it feel secure. In the middle of the night you hear some whimpering, but you think: No. It has to learn that its place is in the gutter. Be firm.
Of course you give in, but it's just one night! Then, years later, the drain is still at the foot of the bed at the end of the night.
Well, maybe not. But perhaps they do become part of the family, especially if you name them. Our drain is named Clogg, a name I took from the shoe-storage page of an Ikea catalog.
That's right — we already adopted our drain. My wife has been drain-aware for a long time. She's one of those civic-minded sorts who brings enormous plastic bags to the dog park because other people can't be bothered to pick up the poop — Oh, my dog is having a bowel movement in the wild, who could've predicted that, and me without a bag. Pure Minnesota altruism, with a satisfying soupçon of justified pique over lazy bums.
Since we live at the bottom of a slight incline, everything rolls down the gutter and collects on top of the drain. Bottles, squirrel corpses, fast-food bags strewn by heedless youth. If you don't clean it, it floods when it rains. And cleaning out the wet leaves is work. Me, I'm more inclined to stick a snorkel down there and let the raccoons figure it out.
Also, you shouldn't let leaves go down the drain, because that poisons the lakes. I accept this totally scientific fact, but I also think: Haven't leaves been falling into lakes for a few million years or so?
I mean, I totally get why putting motor oil or expired gas down the drains is horrible, which is why you should only do it at night wearing dark clothing. (I AM KIDDING!) But leaves? That's nature. You'd think that nature has gotten the whole leaves-decomposing thing figured out.
But here's the thing. We haven't legally adopted the drain. If we do, I want a sign. Like the highways. You've seen the signs: The next mile of highway adopted by the Osage Optimists or the Pipestone Pessimists or the Motley Masons. You never see anyone doing anything there, but you assume they pick up stuff, lest it reflect poorly on the group. Then again, the litter-picking requirements are but two times a year, so it's not like adopting a dog.
Unless you're the type of dog owner who picks up after the pooch every six months, in which case, my wife would really like to have a word with you.
