Tuesday, March 18, 2008

The Value of Gold

Happy Saint Patricks Day!

Yes, my greetings are a day late, but the shock has taken some time to get over. It's not that work was tiring yesterday or I was stressed about my finance final or that I took a nap or that my teeth hurt from going to the dentist (they didn't, I need to focus on my gums more, though) or from being hung over from too much green beer.

Everyone knows that leprechauns like gold. Well, my youngest brought home a gold nugget from school. I guess it was what they used as bait in their leprechaun traps. Before you come to our house and rob us because the price of gold is so high, its just a small rock painted gold. It could have even been taken off the playground for all I know.

Gold nugget

Yesterday, as I was on a conference call, my youngest came to me, with a gleam of panic in his eyes. He quietly got my attention, “Dad, I dropped my gold.”

I muted the phone and asked, “Where did you drop it?”

“In the toilet.”

“I'll come help you in a minute. Don't do anything.” My call was wrapping up, so he wouldn't have to wait too long.

“But there is pee in the toilet.”

I was still on the phone, so I just decided to cross that bridge when I came to it. My call quickly came to an end and I wandered into the bathroom. The gold nugget was at the bottom of the toilet (because gold nuggets don't float) and the toilet had been pee'd in. Just like he said it was.

We didn't have any long gloves and as I wandered through the kitchen I knew that Heather would not stand for the use of a long spoon to fish it out. We had some short latex gloves, but they only cover up to my wrist, so they would just get filled up with pee.

With some consternation, I shot my hand into the toilet bowl, grabbed the gold nugget, flushed the toilet and washed my hand and the nugget with lots of soap and really hot water. I was careful to scrub the nugget, but not too much, lest the gold would flake off and be lost in the sink.

Yeah it was gross, but it wasn't that bad. It was over pretty quickly. This definitely pushes the limits on the grossest thing I've ever done.

But its one of those things you do for your kids. It was important to him and so I got it for him.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

we are NEVER shaking hands. EVER. ;D

Beau said...

Kung-fu Helen - we can just bow respectfully. If you can still respect me after I've reached into the toilet.

Anonymous said...

I respect the need to save the child many hours of howling. However, we're still never shaking hands. Unless of course I supervise a dip into a vat of bleach. Followed by several surgical scrubs. Followed by antibacterial somethign or other.

My BIL once dropped his cell phone into the toilet after pooping. Horrified I said" So what did you do? " He looked at me like I'd lost my mind for asking and said "Flushed that sucker right on down." LOL!