Toilet Troubles

I'm not quite sure when this experience happened. After much discussion, my mom and I decided that I must have been around 4. So sometime around the year 1987, my family and I were visiting my Grandma and Grandpa McGrath. There was a lot of family around, and a lot of us were sharing the same bathroom(s).

I remember one night, before bed, my mom and dad were helping me get ready to take a bath, and before I got in I used the bathroom. Now this is where the traumatic part starts. At least it was traumatic to me, a 4 year-old. I flushed the toilet and the water started swirling upwards. Normally, that wouldn't have been so bad, but it just kept going up. This had never happened to me before so I was watching it to see what would happen. Then my dad quickly started to unclog the toilet. In that process, the silk flowers on the back of the toilet were knocked into the swirling water. I tried to get them out, but my mom who was on the other side of the bathroom started yelling (at least I remember it being yelling, but my mom never yells, so this must be one of those traumatic memories that got warped), "GET BACK! GET BACK FROM THE WATER! DON'T TOUCH IT! DON'T GET YOUR FEET IN IT! IT'S DIRTY!" And I specifically remember her holding me in her lap so my feet wouldn't get wet.

Well, for a long time after that, I was deathly afraid of flushing the toilet because, for all I knew, toilets could overflow at any moment regardless of what you put in there! For many years after that, I would use the toilet, wash my hands, flush the toilet with my foot, and then RUN out of the bathroom.