I think he's been playing too much Super Mario Bros.........

Every once in a while, I have to reach to find something to write about. For the most part, though, they're pretty much served up like a great big shiny silver platter. It's almost to the point that when I'm in these situations, everything slows down, the lights change a little bit, and I can here the angelic voices in the background, 'HHHHHHHHHAaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhmmm'.

Today, (I'm writing this on Friday afternoon) I went home for lunch. When I got home, all of the kids were upstairs, so I made myself a sandwich, ate some over sized cheese puffs, drank some water, then realized that I had to pee. I go into the downstairs bathroom, and just when I'm about to pee, I notice the biggest mound of toilet paper that you could possibly imagine piled up in the toilet. Seriously, it was huge. There was still dry toilet paper above the water line. For a split second, I wondered if maybe it was a science project; that maybe one of the kids was trying to create an exact replica of the iceberg that the Titanic ran into. Then I remembered that it's summer, and the kids aren't in school.

Now if this were an isolated incident, I'd probably just plunge it, and move on. But this is no isolated incident. From the time that I got back from my trip Wednesday afternoon, to the time that I was staring at The Crappalachian Mountains, I had already fixed two other clogged toilets. That means that at the current pace, I would have to unclog 250.5 toilets by the end of the year. (I can only assume that the half toilet would come from Jaxon's miniature potty. I'm not sure how those things could even get clogged, but I'm fairly certain Jax would find a way.) I'm not too keen on fixing that many toilets, so I decide to try to get to the root cause of the problem, and go upstairs looking for children.

There's something you should know about our kids. None of them have ever, and I mean never, ever, ever admitted to doing anything wrong. I'm not exaggerating. You could stand there, watch Scarlett write, 'Scarlett wrote this' on the wall in red ink. And when you ask her about it, Scarlett would turn to you, look you dead in the eye, straight faced, with red ink all over her fingers, and say, 'Cole did it!' So when I set out to find information on who was responsible for Mount St. Charmin, it played out like a bad episode of Law and Order. (Not Law and Order - Criminal Intent, or Law and Order - SVU, or Law and Order - Trial by Jury. No, I mean the original Law and Order) I can even hear the, 'Daaahhh Duuuhhh' as I walk up the stairs. And see the 'Jeff's Staircase, Goose Creek, SC' typed in white at my feet. Anyway, I go the foot of the boys' stairs and yell, 'Cole and Gavin, which one of yall pooped in the downstairs bathroom?' And I simultaneously hear, 'Not me!' from Gavin, and 'Gavin!' from Cole. Then Gavin looks at Cole with a puzzled look, and Cole quickly senses that it wasn't Gavin and says, 'Oh, you mean ALL the way downstairs? I thought you meant the 2nd floor. Gavin pooed on the 2nd floor.' (For the record, I didn't know if the past tense of the verb form of the word poo was pooed or pood. I had to look it up. It's pooed.) But I digress.

Anyway, here's another thing that you should know about my kids: They couldn't repeat what you told them to do five seconds ago, but they can tell you when and where each of the other kids' last BM took place. No, really. You don't believe me? Keep reading...

Next I go into the girls' room where Tori and Scarlett both were, 'Did either of you poop in the downstairs bathroom?' And I get a harmonic, 'I didn't!' from both of them. Then Tori says, 'Cole did last night, but nobody did this morning.' And Scarlett reiterates, 'Yeah, Cole was the last one to poop down there. And that was last night when we were eating dinner.' Then I thought to myself, 'Oh yeah, Cole did get up from dinner and use the bathroom last night. Good intel.'

Confident with my detective work, I call Cole downstairs to come look at Sierra de La Papel Tigiénico with me. (That means 'Mountain of Toilet Paper' in Spanish. Sorry, but I ran out of clever ways to describe the massive pillowy heap of obstruction.) After he finally quasi-admits to being the culprit, (He never actually admit it, but he stopped trying to convince me otherwise) we had this exchange:

Me: You see that in there? What's that?

Cole: (looking down, kind of mumbling) toilet paper.

Me: (Laughing hysterically inside, but I want to get my point across before showing it) Oh no, man, that's not just toilet paper. That is a crapload of toilet paper. Look at that. Do you always use that much toilet paper?

Cole: (still trying to get a read on whether I'm mad or not, so he goes with the default answer, a very slow) I don't know.

Me: No, Cole, I'm not mad. I'm just curious. How much toilet paper do you use for each wipe?

Cole: (Now he's really confused) Um, a lot.

Me: A lot? What does that mean? Here, show me.

(And I hand him a roll of toilet paper. He takes it, and begins to unroll the toilet paper like a contestant in the Showcase Showdown on The Price is Right, trying to land on $1.00)

Me: Wait? What? You use that much for each wipe? (Now I'm just laughing, and he can clearly see that I really am just curious) And when you wipe, do you scrunch it all together like this? (crumpling it into a wad) Or do you fold it, like this? (folding the toilet paper into a square)

Cole: Crumple it into a ball.

Me: (Still holding the toilet paper, I crumple it up into a little ball) Like this? (He nods) And how many times would you say you normally wipe with these crumpled up balls of toilet paper? Just give me an estimate? Your best guess?

Cole: I don't know, maybe 12.

Me: 12 Times?!? No wonder we can't flush the toilet. Alright look. I'm gonna teach you something. When you wipe your butt, just get about 6 sheets. You don't ever need more than 6 sheets. And look. When you fold it like this, (folding into squares) you get a lot more surface area to work with, so it's less likely that you'll get crap on your hands, which is the goal, right? (Now he's laughing too) And see, this way, when you throw the toilet paper in the toilet, it won't make a giant mountain and clog up the toilet. And look, if you happen to have one of those craps where you wipe and wipe and wipe, but you can't get clean, just flush the toilet after a couple of wipes, and then wipe some more. You got it?

Cole: Got it.

And off he went. He proudly walked out of the bathroom, looking like I just taught him how to change a carburetor. Which, of course, would be impossible since I have no idea how to do that myself. But the point is, he learned something. A valuable lesson, if you will. And I felt pretty good about myself too. Until I realized that I still had to get the toilet unclogged. It's just like the old saying goes, 'Just when you're think you're making progress, you still have crap in the toilet.' That's not a saying? Well, it should be.