Mr. Bucket

It rained for the first time in months on the 4th of July. I'm not talking about a typical Arizona rain that does nothing more than add overwhelming humidity to 120 degree heat and drizzles just enough to make your windshield muddy. It was a real rain, a steady drizzle with a few downpours in which the Heavens gave us a good two inches. That is a lot of rain for central Arizona.

My better half and I spent much of the day reverting to our childhoods by playing in the rain and eating pizza on the back porch. An adult moment kicked in when we realized that the cover over our old boat we inherited was so overloaded with water it sagged to the seats.

 Now this boat is nothing fancy, it's old and practical and in no way flashy, but it's our boat and we want to have it for a long time so we take good care of it. Since the water that had collected from the day's showers was straining the cover, my better half decided we better take care of it. We tried to lift it up and let the water run onto the ground, but it was way too heavy for that. So he says, "I need a bucket." The first thing that came to my mind was "Mr. Bucket is buckets of fun."

Of course he looked at me like he had no idea what I was talking about. Many people may not remember this, but Mr. Bucket was a little kid toy that came out like 15 years ago where the kid has a bunch of plastic balls that they scoop up with a shovel and throw into him, then he spits them out of his mouth. Cute idea right? Right.

After I say that my better half says, "Oh yeah, I remember that now."

"Yeah?" I ask. "Do you remember the little song they used to sing on the commercial?"

Nope, he didn't.

Now when Mr. Bucket came out I was at that age when I was becoming more aware of the adult world, but many innuendos still alluded me. Mr. Bucket's jingle was one of them, and when I did realize what his cute little theme song meant in the dirty adult world it couldn't have been at a better time.

At this time when Mr. Bucket was new and his commercial played fifteen times a day on Saturday morning I was friends with a girl who had two mortal enemies that were always picking on her and trying to beat her up. It was after school one day and my friend and I were on the football field when these two evil girls showed up and tried to start a fight again. They did their usual routine of making fun of her, calling her names, doing whatever they could to provoke us to get into a scuffle with them.

Well my friend had had enough and she told the one girl, "Yeah well at least I'm not a Mr. Bucket like you!"

The three of us stopped and looked at her like, what in the hell are you talking about and I asked her what that meant. She rolled her eyes and said, "You know, like Mr. Bucket's theme song? 'Mr. Bucket, balls pop out of my mouth, Mr. Bucket, buckets of fun!'"

That was really how the jingle went for this children's toy. "Mr. Bucket, balls pop out of my mouth." None of us had EVER caught onto the adult meaning of that until my friend called this girl a Mr. Bucket and we all realized that my friend was callign her slutty. We were all so taken back by the fact that we had never realized this before that all three of us starting laughing our asses off when just seconds before we were ready to get into a fist fight with each other.

Needless to say our fight was diffused for the day. Who can keep fighting with someone after your all just laughed your asses off together? So I thank you, Mr. Bucket, for having such a perverted song at a time in our lives when we were caught in that strange and scary place when we weren't quite girls anymore yet still weren't quite women.

My better half laughed for a good ten minutes about this story, because he never realized how dirty innocent little Mr. Bucket was either until I sang the song again as an adult. And that boys and girls just goes to show how much you've changed through your life without even knowing it.