THE ONE WHERE WE THOUGHT OUR YOUNGER COUSIN WAS A MONSTER

BICHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
translation : { monsterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! }

That was what me and my cousins were screaming when we crowded into the bathroom that evening, many, many years ago. That, and just screaming in general - you know, the whole process of making as much noise as possible when the crap has been scared out of you.

Now so that this story starts making some sort of sense, I guess it needs to start from the beginning ...

When I was a kid, the weekend was the time when our parents would all get together and bring all the kids together to a certain relatives house where the parents would catch up and the kids would be running riot.

If you come from a large family, I am sure that you can relate.

So that the parents could get some peace, us kids would be put in one end of the house where we could rock out and go rugrat wild as much as we wanted without disturbing the peace of the grown-ups. We would hold down our fort and be perfect noisy angels elsewhere ... until dinnertime.

Kids are usually known for being picky when it comes to food - not us, we knew that whatever was being prepared in that peaceful haven the grown-ups created was always going to be goooooooooooooooooood!

And all it took to unleash mass chaos into the dining area was for one brave adult to announce one phrase and one phrase only ...

" MIUDOS! VENHAM COMER! "

translation : { " kids! come and eat! " }

That one phrase would be enough for all hell to break loose as we would all freeze in the midst of all the shenanigans we had created from our imaginations - and then we would all scramble to get to the bathroom first, shoving each other out of the way as we did so.

Why? Because everyone wanted to be first to wash their hands and be seated at the table of course!

Now the layout of my uncles home was that downstairs was the kids domain, the bedroom/playroom was their along with the smaller bathroom - those that were quick enough would cram into the downstairs bathroom to was their hands while the rest had to bolt upstairs.

So that is what the rest of us did - full tilt. We went rushing into the bathroom, didn't bother to turn on the lights (in this race every second counted and besides we were only washing our hands - the open door was just about enough light for that).

We froze. Because on the other side of that very same bathroom, there was something on the toilet and in the darkness it was incredibly difficult to make out what that something was.

We were startled of course, we hadn't expected anyone to be in there - let alone something! But there was this brief silence where we stood staring at it, and it at us. All that we could make out in the dark were eyes, eyes that were blinking right back at us ... that part wasn't the scary part. The scary part was when it spoke, and all you could see were it's teeth as it smiled and said ...

... hello.

And we screamed, we screamed and we screamed and we screamed.

The only logical explanation all of our tiny brains could come up with in that moment was that it was a monster, a real life, coming out of the toilet, talking monster. And we screamed some more.

In fact we screamed so much that the grown-ups came to our rescue, pots, pans and fists in hands - wondering what the hell was going on.

Until one of them turned on the light ...

... and what did the clarity of light reveal to all of us?

That sitting on the porcelain throne was no monster at all, not unless you can call the baby cousin (toddler) of the family a monster.

Our baby cousin just sat there laughing at us, it was one of the few times that I recall seeing a baby laugh so gleefully and with so much gusto. In the end we burst out laughing too even though a good ten seconds before we were almost ready to wet ourselves.

Essentially what had happened was that while we were playing, our cousin got forgotten and made his way to the realm of the grown-ups and had clearly at some point needed to use the bathroom. In our frenzy and ambition to be first at the dinner table - we had forgotten all about that and that was the one where we thought our younger cousin was a monster.