Nighttime Express

A very pregnant woman sat near me today on an outdoor bench in the tiny and quaint downtown area of Winter Garden where I live. She was enormous enough to populate a small country. We talked about pregnancy and all the lovely accompanying conditions of that not so delicate condition. Though it definitely has been awhile since I’ve been pregnant, my youngest, a son now grown, certainly put more than the average wear and tear on my poor body.
Unpregnant, I have a bladder roughly the size of a lima bean but when I was fully “in bloom” that tiny bladder could hold about ¼ of a teaspoon at a time. Especially toward the end. And ladies, you know how it is at night. As soon as the sun goes down, the path to the bathroom becomes well-trodden.

I slept closest to the bathroom and all through the multiple trips each night, I usually didn’t turn on the light or flush so as not to disturb the father of my soon to emerge child. As I perched in the dark on the throne one night toward the end of my pregnancy, I became aware that I was not alone. Aside from the snoring from the bed, I was fully confident no one else should be in the bathroom with me. Besides, I reasoned to myself, the bathroom was tiny, Spartan even. Shower stall, toilet and sink. That’s it. Just the bare basics. There was no room for another person. So what was THAT that just dashed across my feet?

I let out a small scream and began pounding my feet on the floor as if I were rehearsing for a tap routine on “So You Think You Can Dance.” I jumped up and flipped on the light, no longer caring a wit about anyone sleeping, after all, I was defending the life of my precious unborn. I didn’t see anyone or anything which was a good thing because the light apparently didn’t disturb my bedmate one iota so I doubted that a full out assault would have brought out the knight in shining armor.

The next few nights I was on high alert when I used the restroom. Good thing too because around 5am early one morning after multiple nighttime trips involving early labor which resulted in numerous number 1’s and a few number 2’s (hey, early labor gets the body cleaned out and ready for the main event), I decided to turn on the light and take a peek around. And what did my wondering eye cast upon.

A mouse!

Yes, gentle readers; God’s truth here, a mouse was in the john sitting on one of my turds and wads of toilet paper. Now how did he get there, you may ask. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I don’t know the answer to that. My more immediate and pressing observation was that just moments prior to this discovery, my rather generous-sized ass had hovered mere inches from his whiskery little mouse face! Why he might have reached up at any second and tried to gain purchase by grasping my flesh with his pointy little rodent teeth! But I, breathing a pregnant (pun intended) sigh of relief, could continue to carry my unborn darling without such a horrific episode which might have caused years of therapy for both myself and my tiny baby.

I called to my then-husband, “Paul,” I said with some urgency, “There’s a mouse in the toilet.”
Literally, without batting an eye, he responded, “Flush him down.” Then he returned to sleep leaving me alone to determine the future of this living being who was just trying to…trying to WHAT?

With my hand on the handle, the mouse and eye locked gazes, looking deeply into each other’s eyes, I…

So what do you think I did?

What would you have done?