The sound of airplane toilet flushes

I was on a long flight not too long ago, one where they turn the lights out for most of the trip and everybody is just lying like jelly all over their seats fast asleep. Legs propped up over armrests, seats reclined into laps, and headphones, blankets, and eye masks creating cocoon-like defenses against all light, sound, and touch.

Frankly, I don’t like flights like this because I feel really uncomfortable. I think I’m going to wake people up and bother them. I feel like I’m hanging out in a nursery and I’ve finally got all the babies asleep, and now I just have to sit in a rocking chair in the corner taking quiet, calculated breaths until the sun rises.

It’s very stressful.

I have always been paranoid about waking people up. When I was younger and would come home late, I would take about twenty minutes to get from the driveway into my bed. I tiptoed up the walk, slid my house key in the door very slowly, took my shoes off outside, and crept upstairs to the bathroom like a burglar. Often I wouldn’t even flush until morning, preferring to let my business simmer overnight rather than wake somebody up with the sound of it zooming through walls on its way out of the house.

On the airplane I don’t tilt my seat back too far because I think I might crowd the person behind me. I walk down the aisle very carefully, grabbing chairs and overhead compartments for support so that a sudden jolt of turbulence doesn’t knock me into a sleeping grandma’s lap. I have brief visions of shattering her hip and sending her dentures flying into someone’s glass of wine.

It is because of my attempts to keep really quiet on these Voyages of the Subconscious that I am fascinated by the toilets in the airplane.

First of all, they exist! The fact that you can go to the bathroom on an airplane is pretty novel. I bet nobody expected that a hundred years ago. Can you imagine two sailors looking over the front rails of their massive ocean liner in the early 1900s, one of them pointing way up in the clouds and whispering to the other, “One day a man will take a crap up there.” No, me neither.

Anyway, after we get over the fact that these bathrooms exist, let’s talk about that amazing flush. You do your thing, close that lid, hit that little plastic button, and a second later there’s a full five seconds of giant, full-force, vacuumsucking noises. It’s so loud it’s unbelievable—like a transport truck full of silverware crashing into a pyramid of wineglasses on the dirt patch between two World War I trenches.

See, apparently airplanes use something called vacuum toilets. I guess these big guys are perfect for the job because they don’t use much water and are fairly low maintenance. Just one little side effect, though: When you flush them it sounds like the world is exploding.

Personally, I love that beautifully loud airplane toilet flush. And since I can’t very well leave a gift bowl for the next passenger, I’m forced to press the button. The noise of that flush undoubtedly wakes up the last few rows on the airplane every time, so I have no choice but to confront my fears.

So I say thanks, airplane toilet flush. Your whooshing, vacuum-packed boomflush wakes the whole world up.

AWESOME!