His Bowl Runneth Over

My 5-year-old doesn’t like to wipe. Maybe it’s a phase. Maybe his arm isn’t long enough. I don’t know. But it seems like I spend half my day asking if he wiped, flushed and washed his hands.

So the other day, I go into the bathroom and I see the water in the toilet is pretty high.

So I flushed.

Big mistake.

The swirling water started rising higher and higher.

I panicked.

I grabbed the plunger and jammed it into the bowl. Water rushed over the rim…and all over my feet.

I hollered to the kids to get some towels. They brought me a handful of paper towels.

I yelled, “No! I need TOWELS!” They brought me my kitchen dishtowels.

“NOOOO! I need BIG towels!”

By now the water had drenched the bath rug, my feet, the whole bathroom floor, and had started seeping out the door. I tried in vain to get the area rug folded back out of the way. The water was starting toward the kitchen.

As I slopped around in inch-deep poop water trying to stop the relentless rapids, all Alex could do was stand there and say, “I’m sorry, Mommy. I’m sorry.”

I was trying to keep my cool and, at the same time, find out if anything besides toilet paper had been flushed. It was about this time that I looked at the toilet paper roll which, by the way, I had just changed about an hour earlier. There was now less than half a roll.

After a few frantic moments, I had the flood pretty much under control, but I could still hear running water in the tank. I thought maybe the chain had gotten stuck on the thingy in the tank, so I removed the lid and pulled up on the chain. Duh!!! This made the toilet “try” to flush again, sending a new wave of poop water all over me, the floor, and the now-soaked beach towels that the kids finally brought me.

I guess the tenth time’s a charm when it comes to plunging a toilet, and the flood finally subsided. Next came the tricky part of extracting myself and my poop water feet from the bathroom to collect my cleaning supplies without contaminating the rest of the house in the process.

I managed to clean up the mess, get the towels and rug into the wash, and disinfect myself and the floor without further incident.

Later, I was playing Simon Says with the kids and it was my turn to be Simon. I said, “Simon says, ‘How much toilet paper do you use when you go potty?’” They both held up their arms about 6 inches apart. “Simon says, ‘How much toilet paper do you NOT use when you go potty?’” They held their arms apart as far as they could.

Let’s hope they remember that the next time.

Hey, at least he wiped his ass.