self-sufficiency illustrated...sort of...

This is a posting I made on 5/13/04 again on my sister's blog site:

"Isaac" in the story is actually one of the little boys I taught at my dad's church before his retirement:

This happened last week during the Friday night service.

I was seated toward the back when the two boys, Isaac and David, walked in with uncharacteristic silence. (I should have known then and there that something was very wrong, but my trouble-detection radar was not on full operation.)

Even more unusual was that they quietly sat behind me without a word, their faces grim.

I turned my head discreetly and met each of their eyes, a questioning brow raised. When I turned to face forward again, a slight tap on my shoulder got my attention.

“Teacher, Issac did something bad. Something… big,” David volunteered in whispered urgency.

I frowned, looking at Isaac, I whispered and asked: "What?"

Isaac opened and closed his mouth three times, but no audible sound came out. His face was ashen, guilt written all over him.

This is pretty bad, I thought to myself, but didn’t risk any speculations.

I looked from Isaac to David, whose eyes were wide with something like incredulity. He was clearly excited, if not necessarily in a good way.

Obviously David is innocent, I thought wryly as I saw David, eager to lead me out of the sanctuary.

“It’s something big,” offered David, his voice nearly cracking with uncontainable excitement. “In the girls’ bathroom. It’s…big. You gotta come see, Teacher.”

Sighing inwardly, I got up and quietly motioning them both to follow me, the three of us left the sanctuary.

As soon as the sanctuary door closed, David's voice cracked with wild enthusiasm, taking my hand to lead me toward the girls’ bathroom. I pulled back.

“Wait.” Turning to Isaac, I faced him, bending over to his level, “Isaac, tell me what happened first. I want you to tell me what you did.”

Isaac, looking sickly pale as I have never seen him before, muttered, stuttered and stammered, and after 5 minutes of that, I had absolutely no clue as to the deed or the damage done.

He kept raising his arms as though he is drilling a hole into something.

“All right,” I said resignedly, “Let’s go see.”

We walked over there and I gasped when I saw the bathroom floor.

The entire floor (a space of about maybe five by six) was covered with at least half an inch of toilet water, with what appeared to be scattered pieces of toilet papers floating by wasteful soaked bunches all over the place. Apparently Isaac thought to soak up gallons of water with half a roll of toilet paper.

I stood there speechless and, slowly turning to Isaac, asked (careful not to raise my voice since he looked half scared to death as is): “Isaac, how did this happen?”

David gladly supplied an introductory commentary, “I was in the room and Isaac was gone so long, I came over looking for him, and…”

His words trailed away keenly aware of my displeasure at the sight.

I knelt down before Isaac and asked him gently: “Isaac, tell me what you did. How did you cause this flood? Was the toilet stuck when you flushed?”

Isaac shook his head, his frightened eyes averting mine.

Then as I glanced at the deluge, the question of the day arose: “Did…did you pee before this happened?”

Isaac eagerly said, “No.”

I frowned: “Then why did you need to flush it? Were you playing in here?”

Speechless.

Okay. Now I got it.

“Isaac, what did you do to the toilet?”

Isaac began his explanation, finally: "I took the suction thing-y.”

“The what?”

“The suction thing-y.”

I frowned and followed his pudgy little pointer directed toward the wet crime tool, the plunger.

“Isaac, this is a plunger.”

I thought, where on earth did he get a ‘suction thing-y’?

“Plum…”

“Plunger.”

“Plunder.”

“Plunger.”

“Plunger,”he said in his small voice.

“You use it when the toilet is stuck.”

He blinked.

Then it dawned on me. “Did you plunge this into the toilet while you flushed it?”

His eyes almost wide with fear he nodded.

Do you know what it feels like to be punished eternally? I wanted to ask, but held back. I was speechless.

But in all honesty, I couldn’t be angry with him.

"Were you curious as to what a plunger does?"

He nodded eagerly, clearly grateful now we were understanding each other.

"Well, now you know," I muttered more to myself.

I only pointed out his two mistakes: “Isaac, first of all, this is not a playground. There is nothing in the bathroom you should ever play with. Do you understand? Never play in this place. This (lifting the crime tool before him) is not a toy.”

He nodded remorseful.

“And you should have called me immediately as soon as you saw the waters come out. You only came because your brother decided to call me. If David hadn't called me and then the adults saw first..."

I let my words trail, leaving the rest of the wrathful reactions of the other adults to his creative imagination.

He seemed to blanch at that realization.

I went on: "There was no way you could have handled this problem on your own. You tried to fix it so you won’t get into trouble, right?”

He nodded, eyes wide with guilt.

“Well, you know what? You made it worse. (pointing dramatically to the wasted tissue paper) You just wasted a lot of toilet paper trying to cover up your wrongdoing.”

He bowed his head, repentant.

I faced him squarely, calling David as well this time: “Listen to me, both of you. Never try to fix these problems on your own. If you did something wrong, ask an adult for help. Don’t try to solve these kinds of problems on your own. Sin is like that too. You can’t solve the problem of sin alone. You have to ask God for help. Do you understand?”

They both nodded.

I sighed and brought a old towel (we had no mop) and crouching down, began to wipe off the excess water, emptying it into the bucket.

“Ew! Gross!” David commented, giggling in disbelief.

Isaac, feeling miserable, softly muttered: “I should help.”

“Don’t worry about it, Isaac. As long as you know what you did wrong…” I began to quickly clean up the mess, which really was gross even if Isaac assured me he had not peed. For some odd gnawing reason, I felt he wasn’t entirely truthful, as he probably assumed I’d freak out even more.

O well.

As I almost finished, infinitely relieved, Isaac squeaked, “Am I going to be in trouble?”

I realized he meant, Will you tell mommy?

I wanted to tell him, not only his mom, but my mom would totally flip if they saw this, but I didn’t answer.

When I finally finished and stood up, David ran over to me and started to massage my back.

The adults were filing out of the santuary.

“Does this feel better?” David asked, his tiny hands making useless taps on my aching back, smiling.

I smiled back and pat him on his head, “Thank you, David. It’s good.”

Isaac, seeing me smile, seem to take on more color on his pale face and threw me a shocking revelation.

“The plunger... I saw in Larryboy…”

O brother.

Now I understood. The “suction thing-y”!

Larryboy and his silly super-suction ear cups… (See here if you still don't understand.)

No wonder Issac did this bizarre thing.

I tell you, cartoons are dangerous…