Coming Out of the (Water) Closet

In the debate of nature vs. nurture, there are myriad stereotypes bandied about by both sides. Frankly, I find some of these to be very offensive and I, for one, stand firmly on the side of nurture. See, in my house the only time the lid is left up is when the in-laws come to visit. It doesn't matter who it is - my mother-in-law, my father-in-law or my sister-in-law - the lid is always up after they've visited the bathroom. I have raised four boys who, without fail, put the seat down after doing their business (as an aside, the fifth boy is still very much interested in the lid being up; but seeing as how he's only three years old, I figure there's still an opportunity for improvement). The funny thing about all this is that my wife - who, interestingly enough, actually lived with my in-laws for 18 years - also puts the lid down. Perhaps, being the oldest, she got out of the house before the bad behavior had taken root. But rather than conjecturing on something I don't completely understand, let me tell my side of this bucking-of-the-stereotype.

My grandma crochets these cool little yarn balls stuffed with quilt batting. They're usually about the size of a softball and are fantastic for pelting siblings (although there were plenty of occasions where something harder was desired). One of our favorite uses for these balls was a game we called "Deer." One person was designated the hunter and was armed with the "bullets," and the rest were the deer. We had a fantastically big house with a staircase at each end that lent itself well to all-out running, and provided a way to effectively avoid the hunter. This resulted in numerous injuries from tripping over things in the dark or running into walls or furniture - or each other - and endless arguments about whether the bullet had actually hit its mark. But probably the most memorable moments came when a deer was hiding in a bathroom and the yarn ball ended up taking a swim in the toilet because someone had left the lid up. This became known in my mind as a "Tidy Ball." It would probably be more accurately spelled "Ty-D-Ball" in honor of the "Ty-D-Bol" toilet cleaner which was apparently pretty popular in the 1970's. I attribute the name to my older brother Eric.

He had a clever way of seeing a name on a bag or a box, a TV ad or a newspaper and turning it into an epithet. For example, there was a bag in the laundry room that had a label on it that said "Barbizon Flannel." Eric unleashed this in a name-calling attack on one of my younger brothers. It was eventually shortened to simply "Barber," and that nickname stuck with him for some time. Of course, we had our own names for Eric, but they were rarely spoken to his face. Otherwise, we might have been called something much more egregious, such as "Gubernatorial Candidate." In any case, you can imagine the terror that rippled through the deer population when word came that the hunter had a "Tidy Ball." I mean, who wants to get hit by something so unspeakably disgusting? Even if you didn't take a direct hit, there was collateral damage as the ball spun by, spraying its deadly payload on anything within a few feet. I never gave much thought to the discomfort of the hunter carrying one of those things around. Unless I was the hunter. Then I really wanted to nail someone with it and hear the satisfying squelch as the "Tidy Ball" left a big wet mark in the center of someone's back. It soon became a habit to go through the house and make sure every toilet lid was down before we started playing a game of "Deer." Eventually it became something that I just did each time I used the bathroom. So while using the term "nurture" to describe how this came about might not be completely accurate because my parents had nothing to do with it and I would be hard-pressed to call my brothers nurturing, it was certainly not something that I was born with.

That's it then. The truth is out. I'm a man. And I put the lid down after I use the toilet.