Flooded

Mamakat's Prompt: 3.) Write a post inspired by the word: Flooded

It was a random weekday evening.  My father was working one of the three jobs he held while getting his master's degree.  My brother was at football practice.  My mother was upstairs reading or doing Mom-related stuff.  And I was in the basement family room, watching an episode of Happy Days.  It was the one where Fonzie has to get glasses, and yes, I'd seen that episode about 14,000 times, but that's what teenagers did back then until their parents got Beta-max.

I heard the sound of running water, right about the point that Fonzie was visiting Ralph Malph's father, Mickey Malph, who was an optometrist.  It sounded like the shower in the basement bathroom was running, but at first it didn't register in my teenaged brain.  But then it did.  Who is taking a shower?  I got up to investigate.  There was brackish, muddy brown water flowing underneath the closed bathroom door.  Confused, I opened the bathroom door...and a small tidal wave of the stuff came pouring out, flowing over my bare feet and into the family room. 

I stood there a moment, stunned.  Then it hit me, that smell, and I realized that I was standing in raw sewage.  I was up to my ankles in poop water.  I froze, my mind refusing to accept that I was up to my ankles in poop water.  Then I did what any sane person would do under these circumstances.

"MMMMMOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!" 

My voice was shrill, part soprano and part hysteria, and my mother responded very quickly.

"WHAT?!?!?!?!"

We exchanged these pleasantries a few more moments, until my annoyed mother finally came downstairs in her bare feet to see if I was bleeding from an eyeball or some other 'nonsense'.  By this time, the sewage flow had made it halfway across the family room.  In the midst of my state of shock, I vaguely wondered just what the heck the neighbors were eating and what, if anything, could be done to halt the flow of raw sewage over my feet.

My mother, however, knew exactly what to do.  She gritted her teeth, overcame her natural repulsion to anything resembling dirt, and waded through the sewage to the back door, which she opened as wide as she could.  This had the intended effect of stopping the flow of poop water into the family room.  The couch was saved; the stuff instead poured out the back door and onto the grass.  My mother followed the crap out the door and disappeared from sight.

I was still completely 'icked' out, beyond the capacity for problem-solving, so I remained standing in the sewage.  I was still standing there when my mother appeared at the open back door again.  She was not alone.  She had a Roto-Rooter guy by the ear.  She was yelling at him.  I distinctly remember her screaming something about her house being full of sh**.

I stared.  MY mother never yelled.  MY mother never cursed.  Somehow, seeing MY mother, who never freaked out, on the verge of a murderous, hysterical, rage, screaming at the poor Roto-Rooter man, snapped me right out of my shock at standing in poop.  With a shake of my head, I started to head to my room.

I made it two steps.

"Oh no you don't!" My mother's glare would have melted iron. "You get out back and wash off your feet with the hose!"

The Roto-Rooter man and I shared a brief look of commiseration, as the recipients of my mother's wrath, before I hurried out the door.