The Future Forgotten, Half-Empty Bottle of Mr. Bubble

Tiny bubbles in the bath, make me feel maudlin not joy or wrathThe strangest things strike me and make me a tad maudlin. Which, comes to think of it, would make an excellent name for a character in a book about a young man given everything who feels melancholy about it.

Tonight, I prepped a play bath for my children and dolloped a bit of Mr. Bubble into the running water, and I realized or futuremembered that some day, they won’t want toys in the bathtub or a dash of Mr. Bubble to add zing to the near-cleansing experience. I’ve already gamed it out: the older boy will one day decide Mr. Bubble is for babies, much like he decided at one point that Sesame Street is for babies, and that will be that. Perhaps the younger will hold out hope for another dash of the Mr. Bubble at some point, but he’ll follow his older brother’s lead, and he’ll stop asking for toys in the bathtub and for bubbles.

Eventually, the toys will get cleaned up and donated to a church sale or some such collection, but the last bottle of Mr. Bubble will just migrate to the rear of the cabinet. Periodically, I’ll clean and rearrange the contents of the cabinet, but I won’t want to dispose of half a bottle of Mr. Bubble. Eventually, I’ll say I’m saving it for the grandchildren, but I’ll not really know if I’m to have my line continue or if I’ll live to see it.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that one of the most saddening things I saw when I was carrion-crawling around the turn of the century, visiting estate sales to find books or games to list on eBay for a couple bucks, was containers of consumables marked a quarter. You never like to think this can of WD-40 that you’re tossing into your cart at Lowe’s as an afterthought might outlast you, but someday, one will.

No, I’m just Tad today because it’s not the complete recognition of mortality flashing before my eyes, but the fleeting recognition, again, that these days that I often find maddening or dull or somehow otherwise not lived entirely fully will pass and I will miss moments of them with great acuteness.

Or at least I’m planning very carefully to do so.

Note to self: stop buying the economy-sized bottles of Mr. Bubble.

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