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Bubble Boy

Love Those Tiny Bubbles

By Mark Cloud

Bubble. It's such a nice word. You can hardly say it without smiling. It seems to bounce right out of your mouth, conjuring up pleasant images of bubble baths, bubble gum, blowing bubbles through a little plastic wand, Don Ho singing "Tiny Bubbles."

At least those were the bubble images I used to have. But now it's all been ruined for me. Ruined by my 18-month-old son and his sick little toddler mind. Because of him, I'll never think of bubbles in the same way.

It started innocently enough. In fact, I was quite proud of him when he first said the word. One night, as he splashed in the tub, I shot a stream of bubble bath soap out of the Tigger-headed bottle. When the bubbles started surrounding him he just blurted it out. "Bah-bull," he said, as he squeezed his little plastic alligator under the growing pool of bubbles.

I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly. But as I watched him with squinty eyes and tilted head, he held up his bubble-covered alligator, looked at me and said it again: "Bah-bull." I was surprised because I'd never tried to teach him the word. Apparently, it was just one of those things he had picked up on his own after months of bubble baths.

Then I had that moment of anxiety familiar to all parents of toddlers. That paralyzing moment when we realize that these little creatures whose ages we still measure in months know much, much more than we thought. That moment when we imagine other words our dear little ones have picked up unbeknownst to us. That moment when we suddenly realize that when we're driving with them in the car, we really must start referring to other drivers with phrases that don't contain any part of the word "hole."

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