I was going to call this one ‘Waterworld,’ because, much like that film, this incident involved water and sucked … but at least ‘Waterworld’ had Jeanne Triplehorn in it, which makes it way better than the colossal screw-up I pulled this weekend

Subtitle: That one time Bossy almost ruined my house even though she’s never been to my house and was actually about 2,000 miles away when this incident occurred, but still…

“Daddy, I took my socks off,” Jayna announced as I exited my office and saw her at the other end of the hallway. (I’m big on making the kids wear socks around the house when it’s cold out, because, as everyone knows, the single greatest factor in determining whether or not a child falls prey to illness is whether or not that child keeps his or her feet covered with 2 millimeters of cotton, am I right? Which is why I feel it’s totally worthwhile to fight with my children about it every morning, day in, day out, each time seemingly the first that I’ve ever expressed to them this cumbersome demand.)

“Why did you take your socks off, honey?” I asked while looking at the little pink-and-white clumps on the floor near her feet.

“Because they were wet,” she answered.

“They were wet?” I asked, taking a couple more steps toward her. “How did they get —”

And then I saw it. And then I remembered.

OH. FUCK. (And I promise you, that is not a gratuitous use of profanity. In fact, it’s rather subdued, given the situation — as you’ll soon learn.)

***

I was only going to be in my office for a moment. A second, really. Just long enough to, you know, check for that potentially life-changing email or tweet that I apparently believe is going to arrive any minute now, surely it is, because why else would I suffer from a compulsion that forces me to return to my office and check my email and Twitter every other minute?

And thank goodness I did check, because, had I not spent several minutes scrolling through all of the latest tweets and clicking on the various links contained therein, I might have missed this crucially important communication from Bossy …

… and its equally important accompanying photo …

… which, clearly, called for my immediate attention:

Phew. Good thing I got right on that. Now, what was I doing before I came in here? Because I distinctly recall doing something. Hmmm …

“Daddy, I took my socks off” …

OH. FUCK.

***

The wet thing Jayna stepped in? That would be Lake Scratches, a manmade body of water that had formed on the kitchen floor while I was in my office doing Important Business. And for those of you who aren’t geography buffs: Lake Scratches is fed from the north by Scratches Falls … which, on this particular morning, was cascading in grand sheets over the edge of the kitchen counter and down the cabinets thanks to the douchetastic moron who had placed in the drain of the kitchen sink a stopper and then left the water running so that the baking sheet upon which his wife had cooked last night’s chicken could soak for a bit … and we all know who that douchetastic moron is, right?

You know what I can’t stand? I can’t stand when people do Really Stupid Shit.

But you know what I really, really can’t stand? I really, really can’t stand when the person doing the Really Stupid Shit is me.

“Oh no!” I said, barely suppressing the far more fitting profanity-laden tirade that the situation practically demanded … because I am nothing if not a bastion of parental self-control, as I’ve demonstrated so clearly time and again in the pages of this blog.

“Whatsamatter, Daddy?” asked Zan from the other room.

“Daddy blew it, buddy,” I answered. “Daddy totally blew it.”

Somehow, I managed to split my body in two, one half of which turned off the faucet, and the other half of which ran to the linen closet, grabbed a slew of bath towels and tossed them into the disconcertingly deep and wide Lake Scratches, whose boundaries extended all the way underneath the stove, behind which exists a large gap between the baseboard and the floor tile, through which …

OH. FUCK.

I grabbed a couple more towels, dashed down the basement stairs, turned the corner and was greeted by a natural wonder even more breathtaking than Scratches Falls and Lake Scratches: I had discovered the rare Tropical Rain Forest Basement.

Yes, it was raining. In my basement. A lot.

And as I shoved the towels up into one of the primary openings through which the rain was falling, I remembered that this opening existed because my electrician had rewired the kitchen for us after we bought the house, and it was through this opening that he ran a bunch of new electrical lines, which currently were covered in water, and in the midst of which were my hands … and it was then that I realized I was so totally going to win the 2010 Darwin Award, because I was going to be the guy who flooded his kitchen until it showered down into the basement, and who then electrocuted himself to death before falling on the ground in a heap while the rest of Lake Scratches rained down upon his lifeless, idiotic head.

Fortunately, my electrician used the Won’t Kill You When You Flood Your Kitchen and Basement kind of wires, so I avoided death … which, for a few brief minutes, seemed more of a curse than a blessing, given that the water had gone everywhere and required a positively gargantuan cleanup effort that lasted the rest of the morning.

Did I mention that all of this occurred while Wonder Woman was at the gym? Yes, and she returned home to find me standing in the kitchen, pants rolled up to my knees, sopping wet towels everywhere, and the entire contents of the cabinets beneath the kitchen sink strewn all over the floor so I could dry both them and their saturated home.

“What happened??” she asked.

“Daddy blew it, Mommy,” Zan answered.

That about summed it up.