No, this is not Mount Vesuvius, it’s…it’s…it’s Mount Vesbubblus. With no warning, it rapidly appeared in my bathtub the other night. It just sort of came out of nowhere and then, bam! there it was; growing so fast I thought the entire bathroom was going to be consumed in its bubbly slickness.

Okay, it didn’t actually come out of nowhere. It actually came out of, well, one of my wife’s, uh, bath bombs (now don’t touch my Man Card, just hear me out!).

It all started when I came home from work on Tuesday.

“It was bit of a hard day today,” I said upon entering our home while flexing my shoulders in an effort to release the tension.

“That’s too bad,” said Janey. “Why don’t you take a bath and unwind a bit. I’ll take care of dinner.”

Sounding reasonable to me, I said, “Okay, that’s a good idea.” And then turning to head upstairs, she called after me:

“You can use one of my bath bombs if you like. They’re relaxing.”

Relaxing. Hmm, okay, relaxation’s not a bad thing, so what the heck. She told me where they were on the tub, even though they weren’t hard to miss sitting in that large glass bowl. In that bowl were three softball-size “bombs.” They were so big I thought maybe they opened up to reveal smaller ones. But no, these were softball-sized bath bombs. The brand appeared to be French because I couldn’t figure out how to pronounce it; but since the Tour de France is going on, how can it hurt.

Dutifully, and with great difficulty, I finally extricated the bomb from its hermetically sealed plastic tomb, tossing it into the bath as it was filling. Soon, a soothing fragrance of lavender infused the air and I began to feel my shoulders loosen up to finally stop touching my ear lobes. I ever-so-slowly settled into the hot, fragrant water and turned on the jets.

It was like a Mr. Bubble box exploded, bubbles started erupting out of the water. Bubble boulders were mounting up on top of each, higher and higher, sliding down to the water, heading right for me. Then Mount Vesbubblus started spilling over the side, soaking the bathmat. It was a bubbly mayhem threatening to clean everything in its path, leaving behind a swath of soapy scum as far as the eye could see (at least the eye that had bunch soap in it).

Then Caleb, our 10 year old son popped in. Ah, yes, he’s here to save me, I thought. How wrong I was. Instead, that’s when the laughter started. Then he got his mom; she also laughed as Mount Vesbubblus was now sitting taller than me, looming over me like a frothy blob seeking to inhale my head.

In between laughing gasps, she asked me how this happened. I said the jets did it, honest! She didn’t believe me, she thought it was more than that, like maybe the beans from last night’s dinner. But no, I hadn’t had such a bio-experience in the tub…at least not up to that point.

With the bubbly blob lurching toward me I finally gathered enough sense to turn the jets off. Ha, that did it! Mount V stopped growing. And once the laughter stopped, I could hear millions of little popping noises, sounding like little tiny fireworks or ant-sized popcorn popping. Mt. V was dying, never to come back again.

Needless to say, I am swearing off of bath bombs altogether, I;ll just let Janey enjoy her bombs by herself!

Yes, I know, while this is a true story, it is a light-hearted story. Sometimes we just need to laugh a little even as so many things that concern us are going on all over the world.

A merry heart does good, like medicine.

–Proverbs 17:22