Scandalous Hero

Heroes appear in all shapes and sizes. They can be tall, muscular and handsome like Superman saving the world. Or they can be short, wearing a silly uniform and covered in pimple, helping an old lady cross the street so a bus doesn’t hit her. Heroic deeds happen everywhere, although some might be invisible to most.
Scandals, likewise, occur everywhere: in politics, in celebrity magazines, even in your own backyard, literally. My family and I had moved to Virginia after I was about halfway through first grade and my sister was halfway though third. We first lived in an apartment for a little while our new house was being built. For some reason, things often disappeared in that apartment… many a beanie baby was never to be seen again. Somehow my sister even managed to loose the quilt that one of our good friends had made for her. Luckily, we soon got out of the building of disappearing objects and moved into our new neighborhood, McLean 100. Named so because we were in the area called Mclean and supposedly there were 100 houses… or acres… or something like that. However, first we had to wait for our house to be finished.
Finally, our new house was ready to be inhabited. My parents thought it was a good idea just to check everything out before actually moving in, so about a week before moving into the house my parents took my sister and I on a field trip to our new neighborhood and the place where we would be staying for the rest of our lives. Or so we thought at the time, it actually ended up being only six and a half years.
So after arriving at our soon-to-be new residence, being my little five year old self, I explored the house, trying to discover all of its hidden wonders before we had to leave. Everything was new, the staircase rails were shiny and smooth, the marble shone and was easy to slide on (which would cause many accidents in the future), and most thrilling to me, the sinks and the bathrooms had never been used. The countertops were sparkly having never touched soapy water or sticky fingers before. The faucet head gleamed up at me and I darling tried to turn it on. The water sputtered so I quickly turned it off.
Soon I realized that I really had to go to the bathroom. I went up to my mom and said, “Mom, I really have to go to the bathroom”. Her obvious reply was simply, “Then go”. However, I don’t think she understood what it meant to be the first person to go to the bathroom in a new house. The thought was terrifying to me. Different scenarios frolicked through my head, but the one that stuck out was the one in which the house exploded when the toilet was flushed. My mom didn’t realize that new toilets were not meant to be flushed, only until people knew for sure that it was okay to use them without the fear of the house being detonated.
However, if you don’t pee for a while, the feeling really starts getting to you, especially if you are five and that’s the only thing occupying your mind. So I pondered and I pondered and I came up with three options.
a. I can relieve myself in the bathroom and then ruin my house (and life) forever as it is flooded in water and feces, causing my parents to go bankrupt as they try to build a new house, leading to them to resort to sending me to an orphanage since they can only keep one child and since I was the child that caused them all of their misery, it would make sense for them to send me off and keep my sister.
b. I can hold my pee in until I myself explode, which would also result in my parents being miserable for the rest of their lives because their youngest (and favorite, I might add) daughter died at such a ripe, young age since unfortunately she has the bladder of an elephant and can only hold it for so long.
c. Peeing outside.
Eureka. I found my solution. Plain and simple! Dogs do it, why couldn’t I? PEE OUTSIDE! Why didn’t I think of it before? That way everyone’s happy; my parents wouldn’t have to send me to and orphanage or pay for my three foot coffin.
So I scampered outside and carefully glanced around to make sure no one was around. I may have been five and peeing outside, but I still had my dignity. So, I popped a squat and peed on our new luscious front lawn, forever to be tarnished by me. I glanced down the street and saw a truck coming my way so I tried to hurry up. Somehow, though, there was a feeling in my gut that what I was doing was… wrong. However, I just couldn’t place it. It seemed as thought I was doing the right thing, my house would be saved by this option, as well as my life. Obviously, my good luck started when I was young and of course the truck pulled up in front of my house. I quickly pulled up my pants and ran and hid.
Somehow my mother found out. I might have told her or she might have just seen me. But boy was I in trouble. She yelled at me for a bit and asked me why I didn’t just use the toilet. I couldn’t tell her that the house would explode if I flushed the toilet, so I became the unknown hero, the person who saved our house from devastation and destruction. Others, however, view the situation as something different, something shameful. My mother, for instance. It was a new neighborhood and nobody knew us and the first thing that marked us as a family in McLean 100 was the fact that the Kumar’s youngest daughter had peed on her front lawn in broad daylight. How scandalous.