Late this week my wife and I decided to make another big push on our bathroom remodel. We've had all the tile up around the bathtub for a while now. Things stalled as the holidays stormed through and my work got a bit crazier than usual. After a month or so of absolute stagnation and having to stare at half-demolished walls, the frustration and guilt over our lack of progress finally came to a head.
The first stop was Home Depot, of course. We showed up about an hour before closing on a weeknight. The place was nearly deserted, a complete change of pace from the usual buzzing madness that I find myself a part of on too many Saturday afternoons.
My wife kept our son entertained as I hunted and gathered all the tools and materials we would need to spend a weekend sweating and swearing. Our little guy had a blast, as usual. This time, he pulled a hand truck along the entire perimeter of the monster store.
We wrestled all the heavy stuff into the minivan, drove the three-or-so blocks back to our house, and hefted the entire load into our garage. Usually, an epic Home Depot run filled with so much decision making and sheet-good lugging is enough to get me crying "uncle" for the evening. So I surprised the heck out of myself when, instead of heading down the hall to crash in bed with the latest issue of FineScale Modeler for a few minutes, I stepped into the bathroom to once again size up the job of removing the wallboard. Normally, I'm not in the habit of tearing down perfectly good wallboard, but in this case, one of the feeble-minded previous owners had deeply scored the wall in a disastrously stupid attempt to remove wallpaper.
Before I knew it, I transitioned from estimating the effort involved to actually going at it, wrecking bar in hand. My banging and whacking attracted my wife who was eager to lend a hand and see the damned job completed.
From previous experience, we've developed a rather precise approach to removing large sections of wallboard. After marking the location of all the nails in the wall with the aid of a magnet-tipped pointer, we dig them out with claw hammers. A utility knife makes quick work of the tape in the corners and soon you're lifting off whole sections of old wallboard.
This may sound a bit tedious, but all our other attempts led to the material breaking in unpredictable ways. Often, after a lot of prying, banging, and raising clouds of dust, we'd have a tiny four-by-six-inch bit crack off and shower us with crumbles. Our refined dig-out-the-nails approach actually creates less mess, takes a lot less sweat, and is still pretty fast.
With our last section of wallboard removed and plopped in the garage for future disposal, it was time to congratulate ourselves on a job well started. I collared my son and ducked into the shower with him.
Although I shudder at the concept, the time I spend with my son in the shower is really "quality" time. He has a bunch of bath toys to fiddle with and he gets to wield the showerhead for minutes at a time, spraying everything he can reach. Now that he's learned not to rub his eyes when he has soap on his hands, he even lends a hand washing his dad's feet and legs.
So as my little guy busied himself splashing around, I took to scrubbing off the day's demolition grime. I could feel the grit on my skin and in my hair.
I also caught a small black bit of something on my arm.
At first I thought "bleargh!" and brushed at the small black spot, but whatever it was, it clung to the hair on my arm. I had to pick it off.
It felt like a chunk of soft rubber between my fingertips. Closer inspection revealed something that looked like a small round shred of butyl rubber.
Considering that I'd spent the evening doing battle with drywall, which in white and crumbly, the little piece of black polymer was a little strange.
I shrugged it off and continued with my shower. As I soaped up my chest, I felt lots of extra grime. Looking down, I saw a sprinkling of the same black rubber shreds.
Now I was a bit annoyed. Where was all this crap coming from?
I ran my fingers along my scalp to see if I could comb any more of the stuff out. Instead, I found what felt like a small pit at the top of my head.
Thoroughly freaked out, I hopped out of the shower leaving an obviously puzzled son. Dripping water everywhere, I leaned towards the bathroom mirror (separate from the shower room and unfogged).
I had a bald spot at the top of my head, but not a regular, sliding-into-middle-age bald spot. This was a pit lined with black rubber along the edges surrounding a shiny metal plate.
I stood there for the longest time, growing cold with my mind going a zillion miles an hour. There was the time when I was little and I smacked my head against the steel dash of our truck. I remembered being absolutely terrified of the x-ray machine in the hospital, but I sure didn't remember having a metal plate installed. And what about the time I had the benign skin tumor removed from my thigh? I watched as the doctor cut a deep, dark hole in my leg and I didn't see a drop of blood.
I couldn't help but reach up and press a finger into the gouge. The metal felt chrome slick and strangely warm.
Finally, my son called to me and broke me out of my horrified reverie.
The next morning, the hole in my head had healed over... or maybe it was never there. I try not to think too much about it.
*
Author's note: The mundane parts up to finding all the rubber bits on my shoulders and chest are true. I haven't figured out where the damned stuff came from.
Pakeha