Toledo Tales

A Toledo Tales Guest Editorial
by Rick Waterson

Waterson: Hard at Work and Full of Shit

Sarah, honey, I know that you like to have your friends over now that it’s summer, and your favorite place to hang out is in the basement, with the big TV and video games. But we need to talk, because you and your friends do nothing but drink Pepsi and eat Doritos down there, and you need to know that when nature calls, you need to go upstairs.

Because the basement toilet is a throne, and it’s a throne for my ass only.

Maybe I should back up. I work ten hours a day on other people’s roofs. We’ve need a new roof for three years now, and every day I wake up at six a.m. to lay tar and shingle while your idiot brother Mark wastes another semester at Bowling Green on my dime, and your mother feels the need to pay $3 extra every week for name-brand aspirin. So when I come home dehydrated and cranky, my bowels are aching for a hefty man-shit, and the last thing I want is to sit where one of your 9th grade friends just blew out a Happy Meal.

(Besides, that may even be against the law or something—putting my ass where a minor had just put hers like, an hour beforehand. I’ll look into it.)

And did I tell you last week I found a tampon in the trash? It’s not like I was rummaging, it was just conspicuously atop the dirty tissues and floss. That’s the kind of nonsense I’m talking about—I don’t want to embarrass you, because you’re still at that delicate age, but you girls need to throw that stuff away in the pink bathroom on the main floor. I never go in there except to steal my comb back from your mother, so you can do your private vaginal hygiene stuff in there.

So Sarah, know that I’m your father, and love you very much, but please don’t use my throne. When I lock that door, turn on the fan, and blast a hard day’s turd while flipping through the new Carhartt catalog, it’s the only moment of peace I get. I beg you, don’t take that away from me.

Labels: throne, toilet, Toledo