You're never going to believe this

Phil started to tell this story to some friends the other night and I swore at him and silenced him immediately. He had only began, “The other day Emily had a splashback...” when I told him to “shut the *$%!@ up.” You see, before a few days ago I had never experienced a splashback and didn’t know that other people get them all the time. Besides, it’s not a very lady-like thing to discuss.

In fact, on the day of the event in question, Phil was in the kitchen with the kids and I was in the bathroom having what my mom calls a “private and personal”. All of a sudden he heard a blood-curdling scream and then from me a quick, “I’m alright. It’s fine. I’m fine.” While he was a bit jolted by the experience, he is used to my jumpiness and figured I’d mistaken my foot for a lizard or some such bizarre hallucination. These things often scare me. You see, I have a very active imagination and I like scary and creepy stories. I freak myself out with them sometimes.

I love all stories (and stories within stories and stories that link to other stories). The crazier they are the more I want to believe them. One of these stories, call it an urban myth, was the backdrop for why I screamed, but I have to get these two other crazy and believable stories in to show just how the bizarre and impossible grip me.

Take for instance the story my friend recently told me. Apparently her brother’s wife’s friend took her three children to the Rhode Island (or was it Connecticut?) Aquarium for the day. She lost her middle son, who was about nine years old. After frantically searching for him, he turned up. And he stunk. He really stunk like fishy yuckiness. But he didn’t look wet and he said he was fine—he was just looking around. Exhausted from the search they headed home. All the way home their minivan stunk. The found son just stunks like crazy. As soon as they get home he races into the bathroom and locks himself in. They check on him through the door and think he’s just embarrassed because his siblings had been going on about his odor. A half hour, then 45 minutes go by and he’s not emerging clean, so they decide to go in. When they finally get into the bathroom they find their son in there with a baby penguin. He apparently snuck in the back door of the exhibit and snatched one and stashed it in his backpack.

Penguins are not afraid of humans, the babies are so damn cute, and they do stink, so I believed the story. I also retold it about 20 times to everyone I saw for the following week or two. Then last week in the newspaper and the television news there was a report of a news conference at the New England (not Connecticut or Rhode Island) Aquarium debunking this urban myth. They had receive calls asking if it was true and they decided to kill the story. I still think it could have happened.

Another friend told me of her friend who got pregnant with twins when she had an IUD. One of the twins was born with the IUD in his hand! Isn’t that wild. I love that story of life prevailing over us trying to control it.

But the most far fetched story that I have ever heard that I still believe is the swimming rat in the toilet story. I can vividly remember when I heard this story. The block where I grew up on Fairmont Hill once had an infestation of rats. I must have been about 8 because I used to wear my hair in two Laura Ingalls braids when I was 8 and my mom was braiding my hair the day my little 3 year old brother came in to report that there were hamsters in our back yard. My mom peeked outside to see that a giant lactating rat with about 50 bulging tits was nursing about 45 tiny rats right next to our tire swing in our side yard. My mom went nuts and marshaled all of the neighbors (and their cats) into immediate action. We tired to flood them out of their burrow, our neighbor Steve Quinsenberry killed a huge one with a shovel, our exterminator caught many in little one-way cages, and the cats caught about half a dozen. As my mom always quotes, “For every one you see, there are 10 you don’t see.”

That’s not the story. During this rat attack and counter-offensive my dad did very little of the front line fighting. As usual, he was very comfortable to leave the domestic problems commonly left to the man of the house to a hired man of the house. My mom is very good at finding men to do what my dad doesn’t really have an interest in doing. It all works out just fine for them—one of those little negotiations of marriage. Anyway, the one man-of-the-house thing my dad did do was mow the lawn. The only thing was he never really got around to it until rather late. While many neighbors mowed their lawns on Saturday morning, my dad mowed his on Sunday night at dusk. It was quite a process.

I am digressing, but this is too good to skip. After sleeping in, going to the second church service 15 minutes late, being the last people to leave the church because my parents were visiting so much, eating brunch at the Original Pancake House where we knew half of the people in the restaurant and had to chat with most of them, coming home and watching a game, he would get dressed to do his duty. He’d put on an old t-shirt and shorts, often letting his “slip” show out the bottom of his shorts. His slip was his boxers. Then he round up Jake or I and we’d have to walk to Wally’s, his best friend from high school and co-owner of the lawn mower. They’d talk for an hour while I tried not to be terrified of Wally’s barky dog. (By the way, when my dad used to walk our dog Rocket, upon their return home, if Rocket pooped, he’d give him a treat. If he pooped in Wally’s yard, he got two. This is emblematic of their friendship.) Then we’d get a ride on the lawn mower back home. Finally, Dad would edge with his non-electrical edger and then mow our postage stamp-sized lawn. The small lawn was one of the reasons they bought the house. While darkness fell and my bedtime approached, edging and mowing involved more talking. Neighbors out on their evening walks would stop to shoot the shit. My childhood involved a lot of listening.

Back to the story. So on one of these nights some neighbor I didn’t know stopped to talk about the rat situation. I was in the yard. For week people had been going back and forth with theories of how the rats got into our quiet little neighborhood. One of the theories was that there were underground streams of water where the rats lived and thrived. This guy claimed that they also got into the sewer of some of our homes. He could verify this because a teenage daughter of one of his neighbors had once opened her toilet and found a rat, coming out of the flush hole in the bottom of the bowl, ready to climb into their happy little home.

I have lived in fear of this scenario for my entire life. Pretty much every time I go to the bathroom, I am worried that this will be the time the rats decide to invade my house. I am haunted daily by what I imagine night happen to me: as soon as I drop my pants and settle in, a flood of rats will overflow from the toilet and take over my happy little home. Maybe this is why I am so fast in the bathroom. It is a dangerous place to be.

Let me get back to the original story. On the day in question, I had a splashback during my “private and personal”. Philip talks about splashbacks as if they happen to him everyday, but I truly cannot remember EVER having cold toilet water splash back on me. Yuck is my first thought. I’m gagging as I write this. Get another bed or wear pajamas and shower several times a day, Phil, is my second thought.

Oh, I shudder at the memory. When I felt something cold on my bare skin I was certain that it was the wet cold nose of a rat who had traveled in underground streams across the nation from Fairmont Hill to Jamaica Plain to get me. I kid you not. I panicked. I screamed. Who wouldn’t if a rat was nudging their ass?

That’s it. One story, six stories, maybe seven. However vulgar, I hope it made you laugh.