Howdy,
You know those movie scenes or “Want to get away?” commercials in which someone (you know it’s you) is snooping around someone else’s bathroom and something crashes or breaks?
I’m calling it the guest bathroom freak-out.
And we had one of those very recently.
I say “we” not as the generic plural to protect myself, because it wasn’t me. Honest.
But I became a part of it. And it made me smile when I thought of that old “Want to get away?” commercial, which had a lady, if I remember correctly, peaking behind a medicine cabinet door, maybe even picking up and holding a prescription bottle, when a shelving collapsed out of the wall cabinet and onto the sink counter.
I thought of it when I saw the racing panic on Titus’ face. Poor Titus. But it was pretty funny, as apparently the snooping and the panic are universal, even for a three year old.
Since we were visiting, I had helped Ti to the restroom, and he’d said he was okay, so I left him locked in the bathroom after taking some time to talk through how the door lock worked and I was confident he was good to go. Not too long later, from the living room I heard him calling for help. Muffled behind the locked door. I assumed it was locked, assuming that was the problem.
The other assumption would be that he needed some other help as he still does after number two on the potty … Ah, the dad life.
But when I got down the hall to him he was able to open the door, and he did not need wiping.
He was holding a vibrating princess electric toothbrush.
And it had him shook.
A real guest bath freak-out.
I was a hero who brought real, palpable relief.
The things we get to run into in life. Ti was stressing from his curiosity snoop suddenly buzzing and shaking, rattling him to the point of having a toothbrush hot-potato and a presence of mind meltdown keeping him from simply sliding the switch to turn it off.
It must have sounded loud to him, and been vibrating like a jackhammer, that just wouldn’t stop. Would never stop.
You could see all that tizzy in his eyes or hear it in his call for help.
He went in there to relieve himself; he didn’t feel it until we was all the way out of the restroom, nobody else seeming concerned that he’d had a run-in with an electric toothbrush standing sentry on the counter of the guest bath.
—Billy
Reading. Writing. Living.
Word Count: 198,886 / On Pace: 198,550 / Year’s Goal: 200,000
Please subscribe to mailing list for the Reading Writing Living journey we’re on and get my newsletter goods. Thank you.