This is a snippet from tonight's dinner conversation with my gf, parents, and me. 

The set up to this is that I left the toilet seat up in the downstairs bathroom today.  Admittedly, I always leave the toilet seat up, with the exception of before going to bed.  My mother saw this and immediately took the moral high ground in her questioning how I could leave the seat up.  I answered matter-of-factly, "I always do."  This obviously was not the answer she was expecting (and let's face it, I was goading her).  So then she turned to my gf and asked how she could stand for such a thing (i don't think the pun was intended there, but i wish it had been).  I cut in by saying that I never expect her to lift the seat post going to the bathroom, though the odds are that I will be going to the bathroom next, and that more than half of those times, I will need to toilet seat up.  I think it is reasonable that she expect me to look before I pee, and simply lift the seat rather than pee all over it.  Which I do.  In the same vain, when I go pee-pees in the potty, and leave the seat up, during the day, and I have enough faith in my gf that she will not walk, eyes closed, into the bathroom and cannonball into the toilet.  Seeing the toilet seat up, she is overly qualified to knock that seat on down before sitting.  Which she does.  And there, in a nutshell, we find domestic bliss.  Now, as I said, nighttime is the exception.  I DO expect her to walk into the bathroom with her eyes closed at night, and so I put that seat on down.  When I do forget, when I come to bed and she gets up to go to the bathroom, I warn her.  I do.  She can verify this.  Also, after #2, we both leave it down, cause . . . I mean . . . come on.

Anyways.  Just as it usually happens, whenever I think I finally have control of a family moment, I somehow manage to walk right into my own undoing. Tonight was no exception.  As this conversation is winding down my mom drops this bomb.  "Well maybe Matt's reticence to put the seat down has something to do with the concussion he got."  My gf gives me the sidelong glance that says, "Excuse me, I don't know the concussion story.  Please, do share." I, in return, give her the, "I have no fucking clue what this lady is talking about."  I ask my mother to elaborate.  Big mistake.

"Well, when you were potty training, you were like 2 or 3 years old, you were peeing in the potty and concentrating and watching your stream . . . when the seat came down and smashed you on the top of the head and knocked you out.  I had to call the doctor.  He said to watch you very carefully (which she did for the next 29 years) and not let you go to bed."

EXCUSE ME!!!  YOU LET THE TOILET KNOCK MY ADORABLE BABY SELF UNCONSCIOUS!  UNCONSCIONABLE!!!  I just picture my tiny, big eyed, bowl-hair cutted self, all 2 feet and 40 lbs. of me, lying on my back on the white tile floor.  Pant's down, pee still squirting out of my little baby penis, like someone had knocked over one of those baby cupid fountains that pee's water into the larger pool.  Of course I have no idea if this is what actually happened, but that's how i'm choosing to picture it in retrospect.  And I am outraged (but not really).

What surprises me most about this horrible horrible (horribly funny) story, is that it took 29 years to resurface.  I assure you that my parents have enjoyed the retelling of, what I thought was, every embarrassing moment of my childhood (it's as if they KNEW i'd write a blog someday and would need material) over and over and over again.  How this toilet tale managed to escape family lore I truly do not know, since bathroom/bodily fluid related stories are kind of the family favorites. What I do know is that I certainly will no longer be lectured to RE: my toilet seat behavior.  Until I need to physically pull my parents out of the toilet, I think it's clear that they owe me one.