and all we could do was watch it swirl down the pipes
I was flushing some toilet paper down the toilet after blowing my nose and my husband was getting ready to floss his teeth. In a grand flourish he began to pull the floss out of the case and finished the movement by losing his grip on the case and we both watched the case of dental floss arc through the air and plop into the toilet already in mid-flush.
As it swirled around the bowl, a couple of thoughts floated to the surface of my mind. First, was it really going to go through the pipes or was it going to get stuck in the u-bend? Second, was this odd little cheering section in my head as the floss valiantly tried to stay afloat, "Go little floss! Go! Keep floating!" Only to have that idea replaced by, "if it's still floating, who is going to pick it out of the toilet?" and "thank goodness that was only my snot on that toilet paper!"
The two of us stood united and dumbfounded as the dental floss made one last futile loop around the bowl before being sucked down into the u-bend.
Then we laughed hysterically.