Filtration
A Thursday Prompt story
© 2022 by Walter Reimer

Prompt: clearer


This took place in the latter half of the decade of the nineteen seventies. My father had fallen ill, and he issued a ukase to me and my younger brother. The ukase commanded us, among things like looking after the house and obeying our mother (as if we wouldn’t), to find items with which he could prank the nurses.

I come by my sense of humor honestly.

So after purchasing some fake vomit, as this was in the days before the internet, my brother and I duly delivered it to my father. He grinned and thanked us, and after our visit we were about to leave when I saw it.

‘It’ was a plastic urinal, bearing a tag that proclaimed that it had been autoclaved and was sterile. For those of you who don’t know, an autoclave is a type of pressure cooker, used for cleaning and sanitizing medical instruments and other supplies.

An evil idea presented itself.

I swiped the urinal, took it home, and just to be on the safe side I washed it again.

And, on the next visitation day, I strolled into the hospital with the urinal in paw. It was filled half-full of ginger ale and ice, and I was drinking from it like it was a beer stein.

Naturally, this caught the attention of a nurse. “What are you doing?” she gasped.

“Oh, I didn’t like the look of it,” I said, “so I’m putting it through again.” I took another drink before going to my father’s room.

He thought it was hilarious.



end