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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Bubble-filled bathroom like I Love Lucy episode

By: Doug Speirs

Posted: 11/12/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

As I sit at my computer and stare out the window at the blanket of snow covering my driveway, I am reminded of a harrowing and completely true story about the hazards of being submerged in fluffy white stuff.

This alarming story was relayed to me Friday night, before the snowstorm socked us in the chops, as I attempted to eat my weight in Italian food during a big fundraising event at the Caboto Centre.

There I was, innocently trying to decide between the red velvet cake and the death by chocolate cake and the gooey caramel cake, when, suddenly and without warning, I heard someone shout my name and looked up to see my friends George and Eileen frantically waving at me from a nearby table.

When I pulled myself away from the cake buffet, George explained they had an important story to share. "Tell him about the bubble bath," George excitedly told his wife.

"No, you tell him about the bubble bath," Eileen replied.

This went on for a bit until, in a show of marital unity, they jointly launched into the true tale of a terrifying event that occurred recently when George went on a business trip to Saskatoon and courageously agreed to take his lovely wife with him.

They stayed in a swanky hotel in a lavish suite that had a bathroom equipped with a state-of-the-art Jacuzzi. As it happens, George had to attend a business meeting, which is when Eileen made a terrible rookie mistake -- she decided to have a bubble bath without a lifeguard on duty.

With George closeted away in a conference room, Eileen entered the bathroom of their suite, emptied a bottle of Super Ultra Bubbles of Doom bubble bath liquid into the Jacuzzi and -- you will find this hard to believe -- turned on the water.

Then she marched out, shut the door, and spent the next several minutes trying to figure out how to operate the TV remote control in their room. Eventually, she strolled back to the bathroom, flung open the door and -- WHAM! -- was smacked in the face by a gigantic seething wall of fluffy white bubbles.

"There were bubbles filling the bathroom from floor to ceiling!" Eileen squeaked in horror. "All I could see was bubbles!"

With no thought for personal safety, Eileen plunged into the bubbling maelstrom and began wandering around blindly, smacking random objects in hopes of finding the jacuzzi's off button and halting the superstorm of bubbles.

"I couldn't see where I was going," she declared. "It was like an episode of I Love Lucy." For all you young people, I Love Lucy was a hilarious ancient TV show wherein Lucy would do something incredibly dumb and her husband, Desi, would helpfully shriek: "Luuuuucy, you got some 'splainin to do!"

Unable to locate the off button, Eileen, without the benefit of clothing, hatched another plan -- she flung open the door to the enclosed shower and frantically began trying to clear the bathroom by using her arms to push waves of bubbles into the shower stall like a human snowplow.

It was a desperate gamble, but it worked. Eventually, Eileen was able to push enough bubbles into the shower and out into the hallway to clear a path to the jacuzzi, thereby allowing her to turn off the water.

She spent the next few hours using every (bad word) towel she could find in the hotel to quietly mop up the bubbly mess. She wisely saved just enough bubbles in which to savour a hard-earned soak in the jacuzzi.

How did George react? "This is the cleanest bathroom I have ever seen," is what he blurted after his meeting.

Fortunately, everyone survived this brush with bubbles with their limbs and sanity intact, but there is an important safety lesson to be learned from this incident. When someone figures out what that is, I hope they'll let the rest of us know.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 12, 2012 A2

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