The Cornstarch Incident

When we owned the bar, the boys were still really young. Although they weren't completely self-sufficient at 3, they could move through the house and get what they wanted, even when they shouldn't have.

They could also open the baby gate. It was a team effort, as I found out later. Aidan would stand on the foot release trigger thing while holding onto the rail, and Tristan would swing the gate open.

But until that morning, I was under the impression that the child safety gates were child proof.

I lived by the adage that when the boys slept, I slept. I ran a bar, after all, and was up until 3 or 4 a.m. They could sense when I needed sleep and when I didn't. If I needed sleep, they were like insomniac meth heads with a Starbucks gift card. If I didn't need sleep, they slept till 8.

Of course, I was usually up at 6.

Like I said, we owned a bar. It got hot; I was hauling ass most of the time. Sometimes, there was chafing involved. Hey... it happens. I kept a box of cornstarch on my dresser and used it when needed.

It was a Friday morning and after closing on Thursday night, I stayed late to talk to a friend who was going through a divorce. I walked in the door at 3:30, showered and went to bed. Ashley got up and moving and I slept, hoping the boys would sleep in until 8, as they would do occasionally.

Sensing that I needed sleep, as soon as Ash closed the door to leave for work, they came in ready for breakfast at about 5:45. Moaning about my luck, I drug myself out of bed and started my day, looking forward to nap time.

I made it through the morning on a steady infusion of diet coke and Spongebob Squarepants. I also got them lunch early so they'd go down for a nap early, something my Mom taught me.

It worked. I got them down for a nap about 11, and as soon as they were good and asleep, I went to bed and was out.

You know those dreams you have when you actually feel something? You wake up and there's a reason you were feeling what you were feeling. I had a dream that I was sitting on the dock and dangling my feet in the water watching the boys splashing around.

I woke up about 12:15. There was no way I should be waking up less than an hour after getting the boys down. They usually slept two or three hours.

At that point, I noticed that there was a strangely cool sensation on my feet. I kicked at the covers to get them warm and a cloud of powder erupted from the end of the bed.

What the. . .

Remember the scene in The Godfather when they sent a message to the studio mogul who won't give the god son a role in a new movie? Right... the infamous horse head scene. I imagine myself looking like Jack Woltz as he discovered his prize thoroughbred's head in bed with him.

I pulled at the sheets. I made inderscernible questioning sounds. I think I may have stood up on the bed at one point. I definitely screamed "NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" at the top of my lungs.

My feet... hell, my legs up to my knees... were covered in cornstarch. That whole end of the bed was covered. There was some on the floor. There were three tiny, perfect, cornstarchy handprints on the footboard. There was cornstarch on the dog's bed and a half-dollar sized dollop of the stuff still on her head. She looked at me as if to say "If you can't control those little bastards, take me back to the shelter. This sucks!"

The almost empty box of cornstarch lay on its side next to a pile of the powdery stuff that invaded the closet. I spewed a string of expletives all the way to the garage to get a broom and dustpan. I swept under the bed and in the closet. I shook out the dog bed and sheets took them down to the wash.

I mopped. I returned to find that there was still more powder. It took three times to get all the cornstarch off the floor. It was ridiculous. We moved the bed one day to rearrange the room. Little wisps of the stuff fell off the bed's frame to the floor. Ash and I had a laugh about it. It had been a couple of months and I could laugh about it.

To this day, we still find evidence of "The Cornstarch Incident" in the cracks of the oak floor more than four years later.