The Tub

It was a special tub.

She remembered when she first got it.

Her husband, the man of her dreams gave it to her. It took days for them to install it…

walls had to come down and go back up, some in different locations.  Showers and toilets all had to be moved and the old tub had to be disposed of. A new tile floor had to be laid. But once the room was done… it was done and hadn’t changed a bit in 20 years.

Mold was growing in the corners, paint was faded on the walls and some of the popcorn had fallen.

Her friends never said a word about the condition of the room to her.

Her children spoke of it rarely

Her husband tried to fix somethings that needed to be fixed but she stopped him because to her nothing was wrong.  She didn’t see the mold, the faded paint, or anything that was wrong with her room… she only saw perfection.

In fact it was so bad that the last time one of her children mentioned it she became so upset that she cut off all communication and interaction with that child for a period of 6 months.

How dare they talk about her room…

even now with dripping happening downstairs and her husband saying you need to cut the tub off it’s leaking down here…

she ignored even that…

for how could her prefect tub do anything wrong, like over flow… her tub would never cause harm to anyone especially the floor below it.

As time went on she made it to the tub and took her bath.  It was so warm and relaxing.  So nice to have a place she could go and just be with her thoughts. Away from the world and all it’s noises especially the machine noises that was now coming up from her living room below.

noises that were now causing her irritation

noises that was messing with her perfect world.

Enough

With a fit of rage she exited the tub, threw her clothes on, marched down the hall turned the corner and peered into the living room….

the floor had 3 inches of standing water, the sheet rock on the ceiling had fallen in and her husband was hard at work sucking the water up with the dry-vac…

the source of the mechanical noise

“Will you turn that off!” she yelled. “I’m trying to take a bath up here”

Crash!

Splash!

and all other sorts of noises came as the tub from upstairs fell into the living room below through boards that had rotted from many years of being wet.

And now the problem that had been ignored

demanded to be fixed.