The Bathroom Floor

This is our real bathroom floor. I just took this picture and uploaded it all by myself. I'm inordinately proud of this small feat of technological savviness.

When I was fifteen, I woke up one morning bound and determined to go to school even though I had a temperature well over 100, chills, no memory of anything that had happened the day before, and had made it downstairs to the bathroom only by sheer will. I laid down on the bathroom floor and there I stayed until my father came in about a half hour later and asked me what the hell I was doing. The bathroom floor was cracked linoleum, and I was smack in front of the door that led to the basement where the cool air fanned me and convinced me I would be fine as long as I didn't move from that spot.

One summer during college, Bestest Friend and I shared an apartment that had a gag-inducing carpeted bathroom. I dare not imagine all the gross things that had once happened on that carpet. When I imagine that place today, I imagine a new set of hilarious girls living there with the same gross shag carpeting in the bathroom. I remember a good friend spending the night in that bathroom once, spewing Olive Garden tiramisu and some choice beverages, and I often thought she would have been better off doing her hurling outside with the dog shit because that carpet probably made her even more sick every time she caught a break.

The boy was in our bathroom night all Wednesday night. From the comfort of our bedroom, I patted myself on the back for making sure our bathroom floor is always clean. There may be dust bunnies all over the hardwood floor elsewhere in our house, our bed may never be made, and I don't even want to talk about the state of the dust on some of the bookshelves, but the bathroom floor is always clean, just for such occasions. I also stayed awake all night in the comfort of our bedroom because I was incredibly worried, but let's pretend I stayed awake all night giving myself quite a little pep talk on my super housekeeping skills.

The boy has slowly been getting better, hanging out on the recliner in the living room, drinking flat 7Up and Gatorade, while I have been busy hiding away from him for fear the sickness will overtake me, waiting until he is sleeping and refilling his glass, and hiding in the bedroom talking on the phone with Bestest Friend, discussing how best to build a bomb (turns out we don't really know, but I'm confident we could figure it out...maybe), and hoping against hope that this really is just a 24 hour stomach bug.

This morning, I took my stumbling self into the bathroom, but as I got to the doorway, I stood there for a moment. I walked back into the bedroom and spoke loudly because you know how you can't regulate your voice in the morning because you haven't used it all night and you just don't know how loud it's going to be when you speak for the first time in the day? That was going on.

"Did you know there are black tiles on the bathroom floor?"

He just stared at me. "How many times a day do you wipe that floor?"

I guess those black tiles have always been there.