The Knights Elementary Relay for Life team has toilet humor. Team leaders Linda Herman and Joanie Petty have been dropping off a purple potty in front yards for the past two weeks. That’s right — a commode they bedazzled and spray painted.
The move is part of a fundraising campaign to raise money and awareness for the Plant City Relay for Life. If the toilet ends up in your front yard, you can pay $10 to have it removed, $20 to have it removed and sent to a friend (or enemy) of your choice, and $30 to have it removed, sent to someone and insure it won’t end up back on your lawn.
“It’s awesome and it’s making money,” Petty said. “Everyone who’s gotten it has loved it.”
Herman and Petty sneak around at night with four teenage helpers, Matthew Petty, Michael Petty, Patrick Hawke and Benjamin Hawke, to move the heavy porcelain throne.
“We get in the car after a delivery and just laugh and laugh,” Petty said. “You would think that after the ninth time, it wouldn’t be as funny.
They’ve been to over nine houses, averaging about one a day. In its first week, it had already raised $240.
The duo pegged their friend, Lynn Roberts, as the one to start the chain. They texted her giggling from outside of her house that she might want to take a look at her yard. They found out they had placed it in the neighbor’s yard by accident when Roberts came out of the house next door.
“Oddly enough, I found it flattering to be the first one,” Roberts said. “Who doesn’t want a bedazzled toilet? It did it’s job. Neighbors started calling me, telling me I had a toilet in my front yard.”
“It really just takes the first person,” Herman said.
“That’s what I was thinking — who could I send it to that wouldn’t be offended or would keep the ball rolling,” Roberts said.
Roberts sent the toilet to Debbie Hollenkamp, a breast cancer survivor.
“She’s a good sport, and I knew she would continue it,” Roberts said.
From there, it bounced around Walden Lake neighborhoods, occasionally making it out to the country.
The team has heard all kinds of stories, from rumors about people wanting to keep it to a lawn service moving it to the road so they could maintenance without it.
“It’s been fun, it’s been so much fun,” Herman said.
Herman and Petty have plans to start circulating two more toilets, one in residential areas and one for businesses. They got the idea from a Relay summit in Orlando.
“We lovingly borrowed the idea,” Herman sad.