Where Mikey gives up whacking theBoy's noggin with a rolled up Time magazine

Though theBoy is nearly five I still watch over him in the bath. All the literature says you should never leave a kid unattended in a bath right up until at least five years of age. The other thing is too that theBoy uses oil in place of soap and it leaves the bath’s surface extra slippery. So any time he stands or he’s placed in I hover in case I need to grab him.

He has a lot of bath toys in there to entertain himself with while I have a magazine or my loaner phone. But most of the time he will ask for a story instead and so we do a storyverse session.

Lately he’s been asking for a story involving Humpty and Stumpty being caught in a moment of acute personal danger but without the seeming ability to call for help.

The other day the lads were in a sinking boat, headed for the waterfall, and they had no phone with them to call theBoy with because inevitably when they’re in danger I have them call theBoy pleading for assistance. theBoy inevitably refuses to take the call because ‘he’s too busy’. Last night he was in his workshop building bunker buster robots—robots designed to enter bad guys lairs and grab them—for a new client—the International Court of Justice.

So Humpty and Stumpty were sinking and heading for a waterfall. All they had were themselves and a couple of paddles.

In a previous similar story I had a seagull flying above them and it just happened to have a mobile phone in its beak which it dropped, was caught by Humpty, and he then rang theBoy for him. This story theBoy wasn’t having any of it. When the seagull appeared I asked theBoy what it had in its beak and theBoy decided it wasn’t a phone but a big fat worm. The seagull accidentally dropped the worm and Humpty, having received the apparent boon of a seagull delivered mobile phone, caught it. He tried dialling the worm only to discover he’d mooshed a worm up instead, gooey worm innards dripping over his finger.

At that point the seagull, now miffed at dropping its food and some bastard in a sinking boat mooshing it, attacked Humpty.

I’m a fan of prop work in storyverse and I had my Time magazine in hand. So I started lightly battering theBoy with the magazine whilst screaming gull noises at the top of my voice. I decided I would keep lightly battering his large bath-dwelling melon until he told me to stop. Only he didn’t tell me to stop. He just looked at me grinning as I made loud seagull noises and softly whacked him on his head.

So I gave up.

Sometimes during a story I’ll pause the action and go to a guest panel for advice. Since the boys were heading for a waterfall in their sinking canoe the panel consisted of Bear Grylls, Fozzie Bear, and a Sasquatch. Bear Grylls gave sage advice about their using the paddles to jam them against a boulder on the lip of the waterfall and heave themselves out of the sinking boat and onto the boulder and then wave their paddles to signal for help. Fozzie bear was useless and made painful failed pun attempts around the subject of waterfalls. The Sasquatch simply grunted.

At that point the Seagull flew in and attacked the Sasquatch. So I started lightly beating theBoy on the head with my Time magazine again alternating seagull screaming with Sasquatch hooting as the hirsuite hominid attempted to fend off the bird. Again I decided to keep the head whacking up until theBoy told me to stop. He did not and my voice, now strained from animal sounds, croaked to a halt.

Eventually though you’ll be pleased to know theBoy stopped his working on bunker buster robots for the International Court of Justice and went and rescued his friends.

We recently had a big clean out of the shed, with our several old (and large) CRT TVs taken away by waste removal specialists to be legally and properly disposed of. theWife also took advantage of this removal to take away the dying lower half of our king-sized ensemble bed and replace it with a slatted frame. We were doing post-bath Storyverse on the new big bed when theWife hustled us out so she could finish making it. theBoy wanted to know where the session would continue—loungeroom or end room. He stood in the narrow corridor and pointed to each possibility.

‘The toilet!’ I shouted and pushed him into the separate toilet room instead. We jammed in, him next to the toilet, and me with my back against the door. We picked up where we’d left off, more Humpty and Stumpty in danger action, only theBoy kept getting distracted by the toilet and lifting the lid to run his hands along the porcelain rim. When theWife gave us the wave to come back into the big bed I had to rub his hands down with anti-bacterial hand wash gel because of all his toilet touching.

So … less stories as told in the toilet (1) next time…

(1) Well ... toilet room. That sounds weird. What do you call the room where it's dedicated to just a toilet? Water closet? It is water closest!