As told by Linda Seger...
I first heard a variant of that motorcycle/gasoline story when I lived in Switzerland. And I heard it in French, so it has made the rounds!
In, as I recall, 1973, a friend of mine was working as a hospital nurse in Lausanne. He said somebody had come into the hospital with burns and a broken leg. The story was that the man and his wife were to have had some friends over to share a fondue bourgignon (consisting of chunks of beef that the diners cook themselves in a fondue pan filled with coconut oil). As I recall there had been some kind of fight – maybe the guests didn't show up?
So somehow, while cleaning up the wife had emptied the still-hot coconut oil into the toilet and the man went into the bathroom and sat down, lit a cigarette and threw in a match. The toilet didn't explode like in the gasoline version, but the hot oil floating on the water did catch fire right away and gave the man some nasty burns.
When the paramedics came for him, they carried him out on a gurney and down the stairs of the apartment building. When the patient told them what had happened they started laughing and slipped in the stairwell and dropped him, breaking his leg.
(Now, we all know that a woman would never put paper towels in a toilet, so this has to be the origin of the story.)
As told by Bob Comba...
I first heard this story twenty years ago. I had been dining out on the tale for years until I received it back from someone using different locations. It was then I realised I had fallen for an urban legend. I record the gist of the story below leaving out the locational details used to make the story sound "authentic"...
A man came home from work one afternoon and went upstairs to the toilet, as was his normal practice. To assist in his contemplation he lit his pipe and, as usual, dropped the match between his legs into the toilet bowl. Unknown to him, his wife had taken on new help to do the housework. Having cleaned the toilet, the cleaner left a liberal dose of disinfectant in the bowl. When the match hit the fumes they exploded, causing serious damage to the more tender parts of the husband's anatomy. His wife ran to him upon hearing the commotion and, realising the seriousness of his injury, summoned the paramedics to his aid.
The paramedics quickly sized up the urgency of the situation, loaded him on to a stretcher and had him on the way to the ambulance while the wife was still explaining the circumstances of the incident. She reached the climax of the story as they started down the stairs. Both medics struggled manfully with their laughter but, as it got the better of them, they lost their grip on the stretcher, which preceded them all the way down the stairs. The upshot of the story was that when the man eventually arrived at hospital he not only had severe burns between his legs but had both legs broken as well.
Sighting by Ken Dryden...
When National Lampoon published its "True Facts" column during in the 1970s, "The Exploding Toilet" was one of the submissions clipped from a local paper (I've long since tossed the magazine).
In this case, it was a woman who had her aerosol hair spray get stuck while she was using it. She didn't know what to do, so she emptied the rest of the contents into a toilet. Her husband came home a few minutes later, proceeded to sit on the same john and light a cigarette, dropping the match into the bowl.
The same results... BOOM.
Sighting by Alicia Le...
I heard a similar story around 10 or more years ago on the Paul Harvey radio commentary. I believe he started the story with an Isreali man was admitted to the hospital with a broken arm and 3rd degree burns on his scrotum. The story goes...
An Isreali housewife found a roach in the house. She very carefully deposited it in the toilet and tried to drown it. Since it swam rather well, she ran to the kitchen and returned with the bug spray. She sprayed until the roach stopped swimming. Exhausted from her ordeal she left the bathroom to rest. Her husband came home and following his regular routine, went to the throne to read his paper and have a smoke. When he was done he tossed the cigarette beneath him. When the paramedics arrived they asked him how he got his injuries and started laughing so hard they dropped him, breaking his arm.
More: The Exploding Toilet
