Card-Carrying Member of the FPA

Future Plumbers of America, that is.

SuperJoey came to the rescue at the unlikely hour of 4am the other night. After rousing himself to use the upstairs bathroom in the wee hours, he flushed the toilet, and realized it was clogged. He tried flushing once more, but apparently the water in the toilet started rising and rising, until it began cascading out and streaming on to the bathroom floor. Joey's been waiting a long time for the right moment to use that mysterious tool that lives in the corner of the bathroom -- the plunger -- and he industriously set to work.

The job became just a little too big for a four year-old boy, though. By the time his shrieks woke us, the water was streaming down the stairs to the family room. I ran in to find him with his jammies around his ankles, water pooling around his bare feet, still jabbing the plunger into the toilet to no avail. Mommy started shrieking, too, as soon as she saw what looked like a river flowing down the stairs (she could only think about her huge collection of books that's stored underneath those very stairs). Luckily, Daddy put all shrieking to an end when he ran in and turned the water off.

Ten towels later, the water was mopped up, and our little plumber was back in bed. Daddy blames Mommy for using the bathroom last, Mommy blames 80 year-old plumbing, Joey claims he saved the day, and Clara -- of course -- slept through it all.