The Bucket

Back when I was a kid, we didn't have all the fancy gadgets to play with (mostly because Dad was the one playing the computer games, and so we didn't get much computer screen time as he marched his little icon through the different "Rogue" levels, fighting the different letters that stood for monsters, and picking up the fancy Gs that stood for gold...There was also an Nintendo in the house, but that was Chris' and he didn't share it much...wonder who he got that from...).

So, Emily and I spent a lot of time outside, or in our rooms, making up all sorts of exciting games, or rearranging our furniture, or making nests out of freshly cut grass in the yard, or swimming in the pool.

It was magical.

One of our favorite yard games involved a white bucket.

It was made to hold rice, or wheat, or some such thing, but had been turned into an outcast for some reason, and ended up in the garage, and subsequently in the backyard. I think Mom or Dad used it to put weeds in or something. I don't know.

Anyway, the game consisted of finding everything we could that seemed gross, putting it in the bucket, filling the bucket with water, and then stirring it with a stick and cackling manically.

We even put in "poison berries" we found in the yard (we have some of the same kind in the neighborhood, and since I was never sure if they were really poisonous or not, I scream wildly when Eva picks them and asks if she can eat them. Better safe than sorry.).

At other times, we would catch all the snails in the yard and put them in the bucket, and be baffled when we would return to the bucket later and it was empty.

And other times we would gather all the worms we could find in the yard and put them in the bucket, and be baffled when we would return to the bucket later and the worms were all dead.

This same inexplicable thing would happen to all the rolly pollies.

We also would take mollusk shells home from the beach and put them in the bucket, and then come back days later wondering why it smelled awful, not ever realizing that the little gooey creatures inside had basically "drowned" in all the oxygen they were exposed to.

Anyway, the bucket was awesome. It was the everything bucket.

The Everything Bucket.

I don't know what ever happened to it.

It probably got thrown away when we moved.

Which is just as well...

You see, that bucket wasn't just a cauldron, or failed snail habitat, or random-living-creature cemetery.

It was the magic carpet to a world of imagination and wonder.

And we also peed in it.

Yeah.

When we would be in the pool, in would be inevitable that during our play, we ended up needing to use the potty. We never wanted to run wet through the house, because we would get in trouble for leaving wet foot prints on the carpet. And peeling off a wet swim suit and plopping a wet bottom onto the toilet is disturbing on so many levels, especially when you try and wipe and, if you didn't know, wet toilet paper does little more than disintegrate into soggy little balls of mess.

So, we avoided all this by running into the side yard to our trusty white bucket and piddling in it, and then running back into the pool. (I don't ever remember emptying the bucket. My guess is that somebody found it after we had done our duty, and figured it was rain water and just dumped it out. Or something....)

Because you should never pee in the pool.

That's just gross.