April 25th, 2020 10:00 am
You always know a conversation with Dad is going to be awesome when you answer the phone and the first words mumbled out of his mouth are, “Ladybug, I have a story for my blog.” Let me be clear and remind you that he still does not know exactly what a blog is but loves that his daily tales make people laugh, including himself. He loves the blog so much that he is tattling on himself more than Mom does now, so I get these calls pretty regularly.
So as I was completing my morning workout on Saturday I get a call from Dad. I always make it a point to answer the phone whenever any of my family calls no matter what I am doing. You never know if there is an emergency or a fantastic shoe sale and I would not want to miss either. Let us all be real for a second, neither would you! When I am greeted with John’s opening line I immediately pause the workout and take a seat so I do not miss a single moment of what tale I am about to be told.
In typical JD fashion he was randomly cleaning the house very early on on Saturday morning including the master bathroom shower. As he was rinsing down the shower from the cleaning product he took down the detachable shower head and cleaned all the soap up. When the shower was free of suds he turned the water off, returned the head back to the bracket, closed the shower door and went on with his cleaning.
A few hours later when Mom woke up she went into the bathroom to take a shower. At this time Dad was done with his cleaning and was watching the news on the couch in the living room petting Layla and reminding her how much he loved her, because he clearly does not tell her enough. All of a sudden Dad hears a scream arise from the bathroom and he bolts (using this term loosely) off of the couch concerned thinking that Mom has fallen and injured herself. As he approaches the bedroom he hears Mom yell, “Dammit John!” and slowed his pace down, immediately knowing now that he was in trouble.
Poor John all concerned about Linda’s well-being enters the bathroom, now with caution, and asks if Mom is OK. As he finds her soaking wet with multiple towels all over the floor she quickly replies, “NO!” John is completely puzzled by what is going on and Linda proceeds to tell him what happened.
Well, when Dad was cleaning the shower he turned the water off and put the shower head back in the holder like he is supposed to. No problem here, right? He was doing what he was supposed to do after all and listening to directions instructed by Mom.
Wrong.
When he put the shower head back up instead of facing it down toward the shower floor he faced it out toward the shower door. So when poor innocent Mom went to start her shower she turned the water on standing outside to let it warm up and got a face full of cold water drenching her, her nightgown, and flooding the bathroom floor.
When Dad found her she was mad, cold, soaked and re-cleaning the previously cleaned bathroom. Not much was spared from John’s Saturday shower from the walls and towels across the room to the bath carpets and vanity mirrors, nothing stood a chance. One thing is confirmed, their water pressure is equivalent to a fire hose and Mom can take a blow to the face like a trooper!
I can only imagine the shock my Mom was in when she was half awake going to start the shower for a lazy Saturday quarantine morning and gets a full shot of cold water to the face. Apparently nothing wakes you up like Folgers in your cup but I think that Linda would disagree on this statement.
As he is telling me this story I am laughing and quickly remind him that he does this very often. He tells me that this is the only time that he recalls this happening. I quickly remind him that I have documentation from a few years ago of an incident very similar to this while I was living with them. However with that issue I was the recipient. Look for the full details in a future post about JD showering the ceilings. At this point I am not sure if he is innocent or a total master at pulling off classic pranks and making them look totally effortless. He truly could be a prank war champion disguised as a senior citizen in an Operation Jersey Cares sweatshirt. Something to think about.
I could go on and on about my Dad and how great he is with how much joy and humor he adds to my life but I would be lying if I didn’t say my Mom was the true hero in all of this. She has survived with this for 36 years now and made it successfully through 7 weeks of quarantine (so far) with John. Luckily Kenny, Tara and myself sent her a beautiful cupcake flower bouquet for her Birthday that arrived shortly after the incident with the shower facial.
So in fact, April showers do bring Linda beautiful cupcake flowers!
