"The toilet has gone berserk."

I am not much of a husband, at least not when the situation demands it not. But it does not take much of a husband to know, even in the deepest depths of sleep, that these words in the voice of a wife are a call to action - be the bed however warm, cold, or indifferent at the time.

I searched those words with my dawning faculties, as reflex levitated me out of my bed. (For the record: it was chill with the air of the night that was ending, and I did not really count it a loss.) Article, noun, weak verb, strong adjective - I was only, say, thirty degrees from the horizontal before I'd taken those five words apart eight different ways. I was under a call to action, you see, and I was damned sure going to act, and my curse is that my mind acts first.

Somewhere after that, in the last sixty degrees of my reflexes landing me on my feet, I'd perceived the essentially feminine nature of the communication that had roused me, and found time to marvel at it. Maximum emotional content, minimal practical value - I had no idea whether a wrench, a sword, or swim fins would be what I would need first. What does it mean, when a toilet goes berserk? What addressable issues arise?

I growled some variant of those questions as I stumbled toward our toilets. Ultimately I sloshed through water to see for myself, as the responses, like the respondent, remained essentially feminine. (In fairness, I gave her little time, and there was quite a lot of emotional content that needed to come across first.) Swim fins might have been most useful of my first guesses, as it turns out that around a quarter inch of water had occupied my son's designated bathroom and the hallway adjoining, as part of many gallons of water that had been freed from it. No wrench needed, as there was no pipe gushing, nor any need for a sword. Contrary to all reports, the toilet sat as stolid as ever right in its accustomed spot.

We had happened, on that morning, on a significant day in parenting: the day one's child determines that All Things Do Not Flush. We had caught our boy putting his "fish toys" in that toilet some days earlier; apparently we did not fully succeed in stemming his curiosity about the swirling waters. Scolding an echolalic is rarely as effective as one would like. (Would like.)

My son has his own approach to discovering the world, which seems to have dictated this night expedition, and that he attempt flushing repeatedly to clear the evidence of it despite the gallons of water that overflowed. Again acting in character, when this failed, he said nothing to anyone before again retiring. Thus the emotional content.

As I mopped and wrung and spoke in soothing ways, I gradually awakened and wondered how all that water would have ever gotten off the floor without me here. I feel sure it would have happened somehow, but I felt sure it could not have happened without tears being added to it. I even began to smile a bit, thinking of the parallels between this and the day in my parents' life that they still refer to as the Dixie Cup Incident.

Eventually I came to realize, as things began to return to order, that I was more at home in my own house than I had been in some time - in fact, since the last household disaster.

It may be equally unfair of me to consider that essentially masculine.