Mother knows best.
It’s true.
So children . . . listen to your Mom. She knows what to do .
. .
It all began with a request from me to my son. Seeing as we
are limping our way to the end of the school year, our home has fallen into
disarray. There are books, binders, shoes, sports equipment, dolls, and
bicycles, and that is just in our living room. There are dirty bathrooms, messy
bedrooms, and piles of laundry that need to be washed. In other words, it looks
the same as it has for most of the school year, but today it bothered me more
than usual. I decided that it was time to get to work on finding a clean house
under the mess, which meant that I assigned tasks to the children to complete.
My son’s task was to clean the toilets.
Scrubbing toilets. Yes, it is the most disagreeable chore to
be assigned. Which is why, technically he had fewer chores to do. I’m not that
mean of a mom. But I digress.
The good child that he is, he knew the sooner he completed
the chore, the sooner I would stop nagging him to get to work. He decided to
begin in the master bathroom. I was avoiding my chores, by sitting on the
stairs and looking at facebook for a few minutes. I heard N squeezing the
bottle of toilet bowl cleaner, and knew he had run out of it before he came out
of the bathroom. I directed him to the other bathroom, letting him know there
was another bottle of cleaner there. (Don’t you all find it easier for each
bathroom to have it’s own cleaning supplies? Or is it just me?) Since he walks
with the grace of an elephant I heard him moving from one room to the other. I
heard the next bottle of cleaner signaling it was also empty. The toilet
flushed a few seconds later, as he came hurrying downstairs . . . .
“MOOOOMMM!?”
“What? There is no way the toilet is clean if you just put
the cleaner in it and flush. You do realize that don’t you?”
“Um, yes I do know that. But Mom, I may have mixed bleach
and ammonia together, and that is not good.”
“You WHAT?!”
At this point, I usher all of the children outside, I opened
all of the windows in the house from the top, turned on the bathroom exhaust
fan, and flushed the toilet one more time for good measure. I also grabbed the
two bottles of cleaners he had used, and carried them outside. Looking at them,
I realized he had used two different brands of cleaners. One did indeed have
bleach as it’s main germ killing ingredient. The second brand had the active
ingredient of hydrochloric acid.
Now I know I was not a Chemistry major. I also know that I
don’t recall much from that class either. But, what I do know, is that mixing
the two chemicals of bleach, and hydrochloric acid is not a good idea. To
confirm, I even checked Google. Yep, as I suspected, my child had just created
chlorine gas in the toilet. (It takes gas to a whole new level . . .)
The good news for us, was that we needed to leave the house
for awhile anyway. We were away for about an hour, leaving all of the windows
open, fans running, and the a/c was turned off. It was when we came home that
my sweet boy was looking at the windows of the house, and then looks at me, and
says, “You know mom, you really should have opened the windows from the bottom.
Chlorine gas sinks. It’s why it was used as a chemical warfare agent in the First
World War . . . it would sink into the trenches.”
Thank you son for the history lesson, as I went into the
house and opened all of the windows from the bottom. I went ahead and told the
crew to just stay on the back deck for a bit. I needed to run to the store up
the street to get a few items, and it was best if they weren’t in the house.
Seeing as it was a pleasant day, and they didn’t want to go with me to the
store anyway, they agreed. I was in the car when I called my mom to tell her
what had happened. Because, that is what I do, I call Mom. I know when I have a
question, an issue, or just need to tell her “you are not going to believe what
happened now” I can do that.
It was when I got to the “you are not going to believe what
happened now” and I told her about the chlorine gas, that I could tell Mom was
about to go into long distance panic mode. She calmly suggested that I call the
non-emergency line for the fire department, so they could come check the house.
Even Dad got on the phone for this one.
I reluctantly agreed to call . . . while eye rolling (which
is safe to do, because they are 2000 miles away, and so far have never seen me
eye rolling through the phone. Although Mom probably knew, cause she just knows
things like that!)
Now mind you, I am sitting in a car, parked at the grocery
store, Googling the non-emergency phone line for the fire department. When I
call, I speak to a lovely woman who tells me I have reached dispatch. I
confirm, I have indeed called the NON-EMERGENCY phone number, because, I know I
do not have an emergency. She confirms. I tell her the story of my son cleaning
the toilet with two different cleaners and how he has accidentally made
chlorine gas. She asks if I would feel more comfortable if she sent someone out
to check on the house. Thinking that if I call my Mom back and tell her no one
came to check on the house for the children and I . . . well I didn’t want to
think about that phone call. So I agreed.
It is at this time, I realize, I am still parked in a car at
the grocery store up the street, my children are sitting on the deck at home, I
have just agreed to have firemen stop by the house, and the children know
nothing about it. It was a good thing I had never actually turned off the car.
It made it much easier to leave the parking lot. When I got home, the crew had
brought food, drinks and the computer outside. It was as the words “there are
firemen coming over to check on the house” came out of me, that we heard sirens. Full on
sirens, and horns were getting closer by the moment. My children looked at me,
and I looked at them, and hands up I said to them “I swear, I called the
NON-EMERGENCY line! That cannot possibly be for us.”
I got the side-eye from all three of them. One child even
knows how to raise one eye-brow to say without speaking, “seriously mom?”
I went out front to wait for the firemen.
Alone.
If the firemen had had a red fire truck, I may have blended
in.
Bless the firemen. They were not annoyed that they had been
called. They checked the house and gave us the all clear. We were all laughing
by the time they left, and we waved our good-byes.
I called my Mom, telling her, laughingly, about the visit
with the firemen. Jokingly pointing out it was her fault they came in the first
place . . . for which I now stand corrected, because, really none of this would
have happened if I hadn’t asked the boy to clean the toilet in the first place.
Of course, being the wonderful Mom that she is, she also made sure to ask, “so,
did you at least find out if any of the firemen are single?”
“MOMMMMM!?!”
“I love you.”
“I love you too Mom.”
