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The Bonding Qualities Of Using a Household Heating Device as a Urinal: A Letter

Hey Cole,

You know, there are certain days, and I’ll just take this past Valentine’s Day as my not-so-everyday example, when the most romantic thing your mother and I might say to each other is, “Hey, does it smell like poop in here?”

But the other day you beat us to the punch line.

When your mother insisted that the cat took his revenge in the corner of our bedroom carpet after we had just come home from a small weekend getaway the other night, it was a rare occasion when I had to disagree.

“No,” I thought to myself (yet somehow failed to articulate verbally), “it smells more like human urine, only… if it had somehow been burnt into microscopic vapors by a popcorn machine.” How my subconscious knew that sensory experience is far beyond me, and I’m glad my mind wasn’t asked to take it any further, because when your mother recalled to me the story of how you took absolute pleasure in relieving yourself into our oscillating heater fan just before we left on our trip, it instantly made perfect sense to the two of us.

“Oh, that heater’s going out in the breezeway tonight.”

Thanks for the a-ha moment kiddo.

Love,

Dad

Is this a boy thing? Have I just been duly warned?

Am now confiscating all space heaters and putting them in the basement.

Heee hee he.

Boys are such a wonder. I suspect the problem has to do with what the UI Design community likes to call “affordance.”

So, I do caution you about having too many space heaters in one place. To him, your basement — should he walk down and find it one day — may end up looking like half-time at Lincoln Financial field.