Opinions of a five-year-old:

Bath-time blues

By Julia Siedlanowska, Staff Writer

Baths are ruining my life. Not only do they take up valuable time that could be spent playing with my dog or watching Pink Panther cartoons, they always mean bedtime. It’s really frustrating. When I spend a lot of my day designing a multi-coloured tattoo on my hand, I don’t do it to rub it off at the end of the day. When I get ice cream in my hair, I’m like, I don’t care—I was just saving that for later.

Seriously, when mom washes my hair I’m always like “What the f***? Hello! You’re getting that soapy sh** in my eyes!” No matter how many times she says, “Stop freaking out, you’re just going to make it worse,” I always just think… yeah, well… you always say it’s not going to hurt my eyes, but it does every time!

Also, I can’t even pee when I’m in the tub. And mom thinks it’s really gross when I drink the tub water. “All your dirt is in there! I said stop swallowing the water!” But why? It feels really good and it’s my dirt.

It’s so weird that I don’t like baths though, because when it’s over, I’m really pissed. I don’t want to get out. Just when I start having fun and my mother stops torturing me, she says it’s time to leave. Then she puts the blow-dryer on my head and it’s like screaming in my ears. Then she tries to rip out my hair with a brush. Hair is weird.

One time my dad left the room—“Just for a second,” he said—to answer the phone. He told me not to move, but I got kind of bored and then I took the blow-dryer to play with. When my dad came back in and saw me, he dropped the phone and grabbed the blow-dryer. It was funny. His eyes got big. Then he told me not to tell mommy about the grown-up words he said.

I hate it how selective my parents are about the toys I bring in and what I do. I’m like a bad guy being watched in jail or something. Why can’t I fool around in the bathtub? If I want to stand on top of a shampoo bottle and a soap dish, I think I should be allowed to. And when mom yells, “Don’t do that, you’ll fall and crack your skull open and we’ll have to wake up your sister and take you to the hospital,” I’m just like, “Mom…”

Mom says that animals help each other get clean. So one time me and my sister were about to get into the bath and I saw a bug in her hair. I just ate it and then mom started screaming. It was really weird and rules are dumb. But bath time is kind of ok.