Bath Monster

I gave my granddaughter a bath the other night, and when I let the water out of the tub, strange things began to happen. The toilet started bubbling. First it was little gurgles, then much louder. I promise it sounded just like there was a monster in the toilet. Then water sprayed up toward the ceiling from the bathroom sink. It was a very small geyser, but it did have a nice spray.

My granddaughter is almost 3 years old and usually she loves bath time, but when the weird sounds started, she jumped in my lap and wrapped her arms around my neck.

“Nana, what happened?” she asked.

I really wasn’t sure. All I know is that after the weird sounds and the water spray incident, I was afraid to do laundry, afraid to flush the toilet, and afraid of the bathroom sink. I called the plumber and I’m happy to say the monster is gone.

I just hope my granddaughter still likes bath time. None of my boys were particularly fond of being clean. When one of them was about 8 years old, we went to Florida for a week at the beach. The first night we were there, I asked him to go take a shower and he replied, “No way. I’m on vacation. I don’t have to take a bath!”

The twins were the worst. They refused to sit down in the tub. They would stand and scream at me until I was finished bathing them. By the time the ordeal was over, all three of us were wet, mad, and relieved. Once my brother dropped by during their bath time and when he heard the commotion in the back of the house, he came running to see who was wounded. I handed him a towel and put him to work drying off one of the little devils.

Even our dog hates getting a bath. Murphy isn’t a big dog but there’s no way to bathe him without getting soaked myself. Then after he’s towel dried, he runs through the house wide open, jumping on the furniture and rolling on the carpet.

All this talk about bath time reminds me of a little poem I read somewhere: “Forgive me Lord if I have whined, but it takes so much to keep them shined.”