From Tracy's Little Book of the Perils of Autism...

Peril number 52,052 as follows:

Ahem.

I'll keep this short and sweet, because I'm on a few different painkillers and just a little bit of cough syrup (and I don't have a cough, just wanted a nice li'l chaser).

If you have an  autistic child who likes to play with gooey textured things, and SO many do, there may come a day when he or she will sneak away for a few seconds and fill your bathtub with invisible hair conditioner.

Or what I now like to call the gooey textured version of carbon monoxide.

So, rule number one: Enough already with the dye-free, fragrance-free, safe for your body and the environment crap. What are you, a fucking hippie? Ok, fine, be that way. If you want to end up a confused, wet, naked, slippery, rageful, hot, horizontal mess in your bathtub, just go ahead and BE THAT WAY, you have my blessing, I've warned you, go with God, yer gonna need er.

Now I know how alluring this sounds to you. So go ahead, picture it, get it out of your systems, perverts. I'll give you a minute to slobber over yourselves or I'll never get your attention back.

[A minute.]

Good, all done, so onward.

I don't know why he's trying to kill me. I seriously do not get it. He doesn't know how to unlock the refrigerator yet, so I truly do not understand.

The best part of the plot is that less than 24 hours previous to the great conditioner caper, he'd done it with shampoo. Unlike the conditioner, the shampoo had color. And fragrance. STRONG fragrance. (Yeah, this one was NON-non-toxic, there's only so much I can afford, what do I look like, Rockefeller? Shut the fuck up.)

So when the whole upstairs began to reek like a French whorehouse, I got suspicious. And what to my wondering eyes did appear but a thick layer of glistening blue Smurf-jizz coating my bathtub.

(Oh don't cringe, grow up, Smurfs do it too, it's just natural...and once Smurfette wised up and moved to Provincetown, well, that's a whole nuther story for a whole nuther day...luckily most of the boy Smurfs are gay, and don't act all shocked like you didn't know this already, or as if there's anything wrong with it, it's 2012 for Smurf's sake.)

Anywho, get this, I CLEANED it. Immediately. Don't think I haven't forgotten the incident...that fateful afternoon in our adorable little Pelham apartment, 8 short weeks before my wedding when I almost died or at least almost became a quadraplegic because I stood on one leg to shave the other one (still have flashbacks, I sit down for that now). I mean, you all know me well enough at this point, I'm not one for wasting time cleaning up messes that ain't goin nowheres, but I got on this one, tout suite, Smurf-jizz abated, all clear.

But then...

Ha, said all the evil sprites and pixies that revel in my embarrassing naked mishappery. Ha ha ha ha HA, they all said.

So, in closing, quick note to my mother, who will probably read this at some point. I know what you will say, excellent mother. That there is absolutely NOTHING funny about this story. That I could have been killed, brained on the soap holder as it crashed against my unwitting skull. And without even having shaved my wintertime monkey legs, that's how they'd've found me, the unkindest cut of all. All true.

However, since my brain, or what's left of it, has somehow, against all odds, managed to remain on the inside of said skull, you'd better all be giggling your asses off by now, or the chain of misadventures I like to call my life will not have fulfilled its holy purpose.

As for now, I'm off to find a nice safe place to sit and shave my legs.

[Oh, and Mommy...I'm really sorry I said Smurf-jizz to the whole world-wide-world...love ya, me.]