Messes have two causes: Accidents and children

Some of the biggest and most complicated messes I’ve encountered in my life have originated with comparably small containers of liquid. A glass of chocolate milk, for example, seems quite harmless until it crashes to the floor, sending countless shards of glass skittering into the far corners of the kitchen and spraying its contents as far as the eye can see.

In my experience, such messes begin in one of two ways: They happen on accident or, if you have inquisitive young children in your household, they happen on purpose.

We dealt with a mess of the first variety less than a week ago. I was downstairs, brushing my teeth in anticipation of going to bed at a reasonable hour, when I heard something shatter directly above my head.

Youngest Brother had been having a particularly challenging time focusing on his homework when I had retired to my quarters for the evening, so my first thought was that Mom had finally resorted to flinging dishes to get his attention.

I was therefore surprised to see Mom alone in front of the sink, dejectedly scrubbing a pot. The floor behind her was covered by a sea of chocolate milk peppered with little islands of broken glass.

“I was almost done cleaning,” she explained, “and the cutting board shifted in the dish drainer and knocked over a glass.”

We stared at the mess together, taking in both the extent of the disaster and the lateness of the hour. Whoever came up with the saying “Don’t cry over spilled milk” obviously never had to clean it off the floor at 11:30 at night.

I managed a cheerful grin. “Don’t worry. We can handle it.” I found a roll of paper towels and began dabbing at the distributaries that were branching off the main puddle in a spirited attempt to bring chocolate milk to the arid topography of the dining room.

Factoring in the time spent trying to determine whether or not I had accidentally sat on broken glass, it took Mom and I about an hour to clean up the kitchen. Needless to say, both of us had a hard time getting out of bed later that morning.

Although my willingness to help stemmed mostly from sympathy for Mom, a tiny part of it was due to the knowledge that, during the act-first-think-later phase of my childhood, I had intentionally caused a mess of far more epic proportions for which I still owe my parents.

I had heard that if you shook a bottle of soda, it would explode when you opened it. Intrigued, I resolved to put this theory to the test. I blame my inquisitive spirit on watching too many episodes of “The Magic School Bus,” in which Ms. Frizzle encouraged her students to “take chances, make mistakes and get messy.”

I worked out a deal with Oldest Younger Brother (who had not yet learned to question the wisdom of Big Sister) that we would split the work involved in this experiment equally – I would shake the soda, and he would open it.

The results did not disappoint. As I watched from behind the cover of the couch, the soda started spraying out from under the cap before Oldest Younger Brother had even finished twisting it off. He managed to hide behind the refrigerator door before the main event began.

Soda fountained everywhere, splattering the ceiling, coating the cabinets. It dripped from the light fixture and pooled on the kitchen table below. To my gleeful young eyes, it was truly a glorious sight.

That is, until our parents realized that the lack of noise emanating from the kitchen was probably not a good sign and came downstairs to see what we were up to. They were less than pleased to discover that their plans for the day now included sponging lemon-lime soda off of a hanging wicker lamp shade.

Now that I’m older and have experienced a number of unpleasant and unexpected cleaning projects (I recently unblocked my first toilet), I have more empathy for those who end up taking care of the messes. I would never want to intentionally create unnecessary cleaning for anyone else, especially since so many messes happen accidentally.

That doesn’t mean, however, that my siblings and I have lost our interest in exploding soda bottles and other messy experiments. We’ve just learned to take them out into the backyard where the cleanup is minimal – as long as we don’t get too close to the house.

Tete a Tete appears every other week. Teresa Santoski can be reached at tsantoski@nashuatelegraph.com.