Hello everyone! Sorry (once again) I've been a terrible blogger. The holidays is a great distraction for all things productive. But last night as I was getting ready for bed, I thought about all the things that have made me who I am today. All the little pieces and adventures I went on before I knew what writing was.
So we're going to delve into my psyche. You may think I'm a strange little nut (if you didn't already, then I don't know what you're doing here), but these are the true tales of my adventures, and, as best I can recall, all the reasons behind it.
Once upon a time, in a land you probably never heard of, lived a little girl with a nine year age gap between her and her other siblings. Her other siblings seemed large, fierce and scary being so tall and having loud voices and friends and all these things the little girl didn't understand. So the little girl made friends with her neighbors. But neighbors couldn't always come and play, leaving the little girl to make friends with the toys.
There is a reason I bawl like a little baby at the end of Toy Story 3; my toys are my friends, maybe even my family.
This is our story.
My bathtub was pretty awesome. It was the place I could slide down into the tub like a water slide, I could create colossal waves just by sloshing my body to and fro, I could lay on my side, and pump myself around the bottom when the water had all drained out. It also was the place I got my first bump that required stitches, and, when I was bored, would puff baby powder out the window in the hopes of sending a smoke signal to someone (never mind that it was dark and that no one reads smoke signals anymore, I thought I was the smartest kid for using baby powder as a substitute for smoke.)
Bath time was my favorite time of the day. It meant I had free reign of the super deep bathtub in my parent's bathroom. Even though I wasn't supposed to fill it past my belly button, I did it anyway. After all, how could I tell the stories of the deep without the deep? Honestly, it's basic logic people.
Bath-World didn't have a name. I didn't know to name the worlds I created; they just were there. Bath-World is a title I came up with since, well, I have to name it now. Bath-World was inhabited by a wide cast of characters. Belle, Beast, and Mrs. Potts of Beauty and the Beast were there, one of those crazy trolls that were popular in the eighties, cleverly named Trolly (and I never knew if Trolly was a boy or a girl. Part of me said girl, but I think Trolly filled in the guy's part), an old dress-up doll (I'm pretty sure this is the doll I named), Hairy-Kairy Karluda, who always spouted out lacy black mold when I first got in the tub (rinsing her out was a priority, I didn't want those black flecks messing up the water), an over-dressed Hawaiian Minnie Mouse, who sometimes acted as a plug for the drain (she fit in there perfectly), and Motorcylce Mikey, of Ninja turtles was there as well.
I don't remember all of the adventures Bath-World had. I do remember I was obsessed with getting Trolly's hair washed at least twenty times and styled into a little blue play-doh scoop. Sometimes it would work. Other times I couldn't get the hair to mold. Mrs. Potts always had water to give to someone; Belle would always take care of Beast.
There were rules to Bath-World, though. Mikey couldn't go underwater (despite the fact that he's a turtle and this should be no issue for him) unless he had his helmet on. Minnie would occasionally act as the plug while the others went in search of the real plug.
These characters would occupy at least an hour of time until the water had gone uncomfortably lukewarm. Then I'd drain out the tub, making the last few comments I needed to wrap up the story, before Bath-World reset for the next night. No one understood why I needed to take an hour in the tub when I could do all of my business in about ten-fifteen minutes. I just had to play. The bathtub never was just a bathtub. It was my own personal ocean for swimming, my own paradise with no fear of drowning. The warm water took me away from everyone and everything I knew. I was alone with no one to bother me.
Maybe this is why I still take hour long showers.
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