The other day I was enjoying the rare privilege of a shower, and as soon as I got out to dry off, I noticed a smell emanating from my towel. It smelled of something feral and gross…something like…butt.
Why would my towel smell like butt? I don’t do anything to it that would make it smell like butt.
The mystery didn’t seem all that important to me, though, so I simply got a new towel, in the process dripping water all over the floor like I used to do as a kid. I never cleaned it up when I was a kid. I didn’t clean it up as an adult, either, and my six-year-old shouted at me when he slipped and “broke his knee” (he could walk just fine) in the puddle while on his way to get a Band-Aid he didn’t really need. When I explained to him that I only have so much time for a shower, which most definitely does not include the extra time it takes to find a towel that doesn’t smell like butt and clean up the water I might have dripped in the process, he looked at me and said, “You said a bad word. You said ‘butt.’”
“So did you,” I pointed out. He tried to wipe off his grin. I know the game. They say the “bad” words every chance they get. Butt, fart, it never gets old.
My older boys typically bathe in our garden tub for now, because it’s easier to run bath time like an assembly line: three in one bath, washed by one parent; three in the other bath, washed by the other parent. I typically read to the six- and seven-year-old while they bathe together, and the nine-year-old has the privilege of bathing by himself while I read an entirely different story.
One particular night, when the alarm chimed, telling me it was time for the oldest to get out so we could begin our family story time, I walked out of the bathroom to pick up my Silent Reading book. I walked out to our home library and saw that Husband was already reading and that I’d forgotten my timer. So I re-entered my bathroom, where the nine-year-old had been bathing, at a time when I was not normally present.
Drying-off time.
It suddenly all made sense.
The nine-year-old had my towel in his hands. He was drying off, and when he’d finished, he rubbed it all up and down his hind parts, like he was a dog trying to scratch an itch.
“Uh, what are you doing with my towel?” I said.
“I didn’t have one, so I just used the one that was hanging up,” he said.
I pointed to the side of the garden tub, where a towel was draped. I had draped it there. “You didn’t see that towel?”
He shook his head. “Did you just put that there?” he said, with a half smile and a suspicious eye.
“No,” I said. Trust me. No. It’s been there all along.
“Well, I didn’t see it,” he said.
“So you just thought you’d use mine,” I said.
“I thought it was Daddy’s,” he said.
The mystery has been solved: the nine-year-old has been using my towel. And not just using my towel but abusing it. And the only reason he reached for it is because it was the only one hanging up.
I guess that’s a good reason for leaving your towel on the floor, Husband.
That’s where mine’s going from here on out.
This is an excerpt from Hills I’ll Probably Lie Down On, the fourth book in the Crash Test Parents series. To get access to some all-new, never-before-published humor essays in two hilarious Crash Test Parents guides, visit the Crash Test Parents Reader Library page.
(Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash)
