Take a journey with me if you will, through an important life event. Wife wants child, husband agrees. Husband works feverishly, with the skill of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel to grant wife her greatest gift(s). Husband succeeds. Wife gets pregnant. Wife lays her first egg. Husband becomes a Dad. A joyous occasion indeed. However, what is joyous is also the demarcation event that from this point in time, for a parent not one damn thing in life is sacred or private anymore. No, not because the husband bore witness to the hatchling barreling its way through Pops’ personal carnival ride. Sweet visions of of the devil’s doorstep have been preserved by way of sound advice from an old ally. (“Jason, whatever you do, do not go south of the border in that moment.” You know who you are and thank you sir.) Rather, sanctity is lost because from that moment forward neither parent will ever be able to take refuge on the commode without unscheduled visitors of the midget variety. And like many other fledgling middle aged parents, such is life at Mayberry Manor. Right leg up, full crane for final wipe, akin to Danny LaRusso’s triumphant, yet illegal, final move and the bathroom door swings ajar? Big deal. The needle doesn’t move anymore.

Like clockwork, parent enters toilet, door closes briefly, door reopens, child appears, child has question. Because of this programming from my children, when I get to such a place of presumed solitude, my “parent clock” begins ticking faster and faster, like a bomb, generating a crushing anxiety that is the knowledge that I will soon have to re-enter the arena of my children. The anxiety is steady, yet less influenced by the invasion, and more due to the harassment just outside of my personal barricade. You see, the source of the tiny forced entry is neither there to learn, nor do they have time for a social call. As the great Jay Z told us, they are never there to play games with you, they’re there to aim at you, maybe maim you. The man is clairvoyant. Be damned any sense of dignity or privacy, in lieu of the all important business of, “where is my iPad,” “Isla is roasting marshmallows on the couch,” or “I’m thirsty and the bottle of water you just filled up is 2.38 degrees too warm.” Nope. The days of showering or shitting without uninvited guests are long in the rearview. And in all honesty, to be fair, I probably don’t set a good example for them. We are a bit of an open door family. While I don’t look to be particularly fleet on my feet, let the Mother of Dragons turn the shower on and I enter the husky man’s 100 meter dash on the way to a quality control check. So, with history as an indicator, it was reasonably foreseeable that the great bathroom breech of November 2022 would be much of the same. Except it wasn’t.

November 1, 2022. It was a normal day. Hot as balls, because screw Florida and it’s November batwing creating bullshit. Despite the moistness of the day, for me it was was mostly uneventful but for keeping the girls alive. My bride out of town for the day with work, I was on call for school pick up, entertainment, and food. I can rise to the occasion with Dadding once in a while and that was my intent; my mission that day. Because I’m a fitness focused person, the dragons dined on Happy Meals and Halloween candy from the day before, in exchange for a small slice of silence for the man who labored to bring these angels into this world. Loaded into their bar stools, the hatchlings crushed their nugs, stealing my burger along the way, all the while regaling themselves in some variation of that day’s Eastern European YouTube Kids channel. Most likely Putin propaganda but it keeps them quiet so no judging people. Communism exchanged for quiet is reasonable.

Feeling nature’s call, I recognized I would have to take a brief hiatus from my cherubs. “Girls, I’ll be right back. Daddy has to go to the bathroom for a bit. You have your food and water.” I pause to see if they remembered I was on this planet. The oldest dragon looks up from her screen, silently staring at me, then back to the tablet. Says nothing but seems to be privy that something was uttered. Or so I thought. The middle child fails to acknowledge anything, which isn’t a shock, and turns up the volume on whatever subliminal satanism she was teleporting into. The baby sat there smearing cheese and Chic-Fil-A sauce into her mane. Where was Erin? Why does this only happen when I’m alone with them? This horseshit is her department and I lack qualification to remedy this. And so I left the kitchen and the cheese mousse.

The walk to the back of the house was uneventful and uninterrupted, offering promise of a few minutes of independence. The sun was out providing nice lighting into the house, creating a peaceful environment. I was well at that moment. As my yoga friends would say, I was in a “safe space.” There was silence on my voyage and hope sprung eternal for that status to continue upon arrival. As google maps alerted me that I had arrived to the one place in a man’s home he should feel safe, the silence maintained. Like a false prophet’s word, I bought in. I was going to get a few minutes. This was going to be just as I remembered it! No door knocks, no children needing to pee in that toilet that very minute, no wife lurking to sexually harass me. Glory. And so I lived, with no disturbance of the force for what felt like minutes. Multiple minutes. In that moment I had it all. Reading sports, looking at new trucks, really enjoying my time. But then, I was alerted to an emergency.

As if all seven angels of the apocalypse blasted their horns in my ear at once, right there in my shitter, the pocket door slung open, launching me sideways to one side of the toilet in horror. This was not like the B and E’s performed by them before. This was no drill. Had I been armed, I would have deployed my firearm in no particular direction. This was a Seal Team 6 taking out Bin Laden, entry. Fury, noise, and smoke abound. When I came to, all I could hear was the Lain Train formally reporting back to the living room that I had been found alive. Like baby Jessica in the well, I had been rescued. No need to continue the search effort. O-Ring blown and now in need of multiple medical specialists, as I regained my bearings, I wondered aloud what was happening and why was everyone so militant all of a sudden??? To my inquiry, I was informed that I was lost, possibly in danger, and that they had NO IDEA where I could possibly be. Not a clue. All that was evident was that I was at fault, and these three heroes had rescued me. Angrily.

Thereafter I would learn that after I departed the kitchen, Isla took notice that I was gone. Her alarm was shared by Laina, and so the two elder statesmen of clan babyberry made a critical decision, bringing the baby into the fray for her vocal skills. Standing on the barstools for acoustics, repeatedly yelling for me with no answer, they formed a search party, subsequently canvassing not only the house, but the pool area, back patio, and front yard. Never the master bathroom. Never the place parents hide most. With no reliable leads, they turned to the next best thing.

With Dad clearly in danger and their status now “Home Alone,” there was only one way out… Start making calls. Lots of calls. All the calls. Not from a phone, from the iPad. Mommy was in a very important dinner meeting. Dad had told them so, but this took precedence. She can find a new job. Dad had to be found. The seven year old, now armed with an ability to read, and understood now, to be handy with Apple products, took the heroic lead. Call one, fail. Call two, no answer. Fuck failure she though, I am going to keep going. Six calls. Six calls in three minutes to be exact. Six heroic dialings to rescue her old man.

It was only after enduring three consecutive, very unique reprimands that I learned had Laina not “rescued” me from the potty, they would have “had no choice” but to call 911 because Mommy wasn’t answering. If I can do nothing else correctly for my children as their father sinking in the game of life, I can offer a “you’re right babe” to my wife when she recommends learning institutions. You see, both of the elder birds have learned 911 in school, who responds, and apparently quite aggressively, when to avail themselves of this option. This was mere seconds from occurring, all as I sat, blissfully ignorant of the tornado raging through our kitchen.

Three minutes. Add just a few seconds to that and rather than the blonde bomber rousting me from my perch it would have been Pinellas County’s finest, soon to leave with a story to tell. Three minutes before the bloodhounds tracked me, three minutes before the hunt was met with success.

As I reminisce about this intrusion with my newly acquired therapist, I am reassured that mistakes were made. I am a forever changed man, devoid of solitude in my home, constantly huddling under a mandatory report policy for fear of intervention by first responders at any time. A shell of what I once was, I offer this cautionary tale to all other similarly situated dads. Do not get comfortable. Do not believe it can’t happen to you. Do not create an emergency.