CSI: GRANDMA’s HOUSE; Episode 3 Leap of Faith Friday: Frightful Bathrooms

Jim at Busy Dad Blog and Christine at Chicken Fried Therapy and Piper at Bliss in Bloom birthed a concept for Friday posts in February – Leap of Faith Friday. The idea is to do something in your life that you would not ordinarily do, something that is out of your comfort zone and then post about it on Fridays.

Well, I totally didn’t do that, but I am shamefully using this sort of ‘Fearless Friday’ inspiration for today’s CSI post regarding my kids, conquering their fears and getting them to do something out of their own comfort zone. As for my own leap of faith, I will continue to hide behind my keyboard, my spell-check and my thesaurus to make myself sound really smart clever intellectual.

Today’s episode of CSI is being shot on location at Grandma’s house. Whenever my boys visit Mommo and Poppo as we affectionately call them, the boys refuse to use the basement bathroom. I thought it was just my children. However, we discovered that their cousins, aged 13, 8 and 3 also do not willingly use the basement bathroom for quick relief. Rather, if any of them are playing downstairs, they will make the trek up the stairs, through the living room, past the kitchen, down the hall and into the main floor bathroom. We asked. They replied, “That bathroom is too scary.” Reasonable enough as basements can be scary to kids, but we also discovered that this is not limited to times when they are playing downstairs without parental supervision. Recently, the adults were chilling at the basement bar amidst the nostalgic wall decorations, sports paraphernalia, antiques and interesting collectible accessories adorning Mommo and Poppo’s super cool basement when we noticed the young ones were heading upstairs for their urinary urges. We asked again.
“That bathroom is too scary.”
“Not when we are down here. There is nothing to be scared of.”

Then, I used the facilities. As I sat there for the 11.4 seconds it usually takes me to do my business, I scanned the bathroom trying to discern what could be so scary from a kid’s perspective. I took some pictures of the allegedly frightening little room and would like to see if your crime scene investigation skills could identify what on earth would terrify a child using this lavatory.

This is what is in front of the shower.

Close up of what is in front of the shower.

If they were sitting on the toilet, facing the wall, this is what they would see.

As they stand, facing the toilet, this is what they see.

To quote Velma, I think I’ve got this mystery JUST about wrapped up. Getting them to face their fear and use the bathroom, I think, will have to come with age.

KEEP BELIEVING

Angie's note: Based on the comments I feel I must defend this bathroom. The entire basement is decorated with antiques and sports collectibles. This bathroom is decorated with antique farm tools, factory bits from the company Jan's dad started, etc. It is kind of neat, but, yeah, to a kid, SUPER SCARY.