It was the Fourth of July, we were at North Topsail Beach, and it was hot.
My wife, Donna, took Jack, our mentally handicapped son, to the pier at nearby Surf City so they could sit in the shade.
Jack doesn’t know very many words but he knows some sign language and he signed to his mother that he needed to go to the bathroom. Sometimes when he asks to go to the bathroom he really does need to go. Sometimes he doesn’t, he just wants to walk around. Or, maybe, he wants candy. He knows we’ll take him to the bathroom –don’t want to take a chance, do we – and on the way he might snag some candy.
He kept asking and she finally took him to the bathroom on the pier, too late. By then Jack, who was an adult in years, had what my wife called an “upset stomach” and on the way to the bathroom he left a trail.
“The bathroom was very small,” Donna told me. “I took off his bathing suit and washed it out but Jack wouldn’t put it back on – it was wet and cold. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have a towel with me, and I couldn’t march him to the car naked.”
That’s when the man who worked there knocked on the bathroom door.
Donna said she asked him what he wanted and he said he was “looking for the source of the problem.”
“I told him the source was in here with me, and I asked him if he would do me a favor. I said, ‘I’m coming out and I want you to hold this door closed while I run to my car and get a towel.'”
So that’s what happened. He held the bathroom door shut and kept Jack from coming out wearing – nothing. Donna got a towel from her car, wrapped it around Jack, and off they went.
Jack was not embarrassed, he never is. Donna was pretty laid back too, all things considered. This was not her first rodeo.
Coming Friday: Everything Weighs Something