The Auto Flush

In a few short months my son will turn 5 and the rest of my hair will fall from my head. My poor daughter will never know that her daddy once had very thick and curly black hair, but she'll be fine as I am sure that she'll appreciate that her own thick curly hair resembles what I used to have.

One of the great joys of being a parent is a toilet trained child. For obvious reasons this is something that makes all parties happy. And it is an experience that remains with you because there is something about bathrooms that the young folk find to be of interest, or at least my son and his friends.

They love checking out the restrooms of the various stores we hit. Wherever we go I can almost guarantee there will be a trip to the restroom just to inspect the area. And when we get in there I can also be assured that my son will want to see if there are any buttons to push, knobs to twist, levers to pull or doohickeys to play with.

One of his favorites used to be the fabulous autoflush because there were just so many ways to manipulate it.

But within the last week he has grown irritated with it because he feels as if it is robbing him of the right to flush the toilet. He is a big kid and if he used the toilet, by gum he should be both responsible for and allowed to flush it.

So courtesy of his displeasure with the autoflush he has asked his dear old dad to engage in acts of vandalism. What sorts of acts, well to quote him, "Dad, every time you see one you are going to break it and smash it and crush it and then throw it in the trash. And then you are going to kick the toilet so that it behaves."

Call me crazy, but the juvenile delinquent that lives inside me is kind of attracted to this idea. I admit it, I want to break it, smash it, crush it and then throw it away. But every time I think about it I have this image of old Luke cutting the tops off of those parking meters and you remember what happened to him.

They sent him off to a special camp where he got to play with the man with no eyes and learned about what happened when you have a failure to communicate.

And I am not so sure that I am real interested in that, but I can tell you that I can eat more than 60 eggs. But the more I think about it the less interest I have in spending time in such a place. Maybe I can just pretend to break it, smash it and crush it and then throw it away.

Nothing wrong with a little imagination.