EDMONTON – Sources from deep within the Robertson household on bath night have confirmed that two year old toddler Sophie has been spotted insatiably devouring cup after cup of bathwater in a hedonistic display of Roman-era excess.
“It’s the sheer wanton gluttony of it,” said paterfamilias Claude Robertson in hushed tones with fellow plebian and wife Marsha, “to think that whilst we break our backs to support her regime, Sophie ignores the calls for decorum and basic hygiene and continues to dip her Big Bird Watch-Me-Spin Water Wheel deep into the pools of liquid filth for yet another quaff.”
Indeed, this pint-sized Caligula shows no sign of departing from her orgiastic consumption of bathwater, streams of which overflowed her mouth to trail into the thermae below, ripe for future imbibing. A makeshift aqueduct system, hastily constructed by her inflatable bath-toy courtiers, further increased the rate at which she could drink her precious aqua vitae.
Pleas from senior advisers to “Stop dear Emperor!”, “Have heed for the needs of your public!” or “No, that’s enough now Sophie. Stop drinking the bathwater. It’s yucky”, fall upon deaf ears. Responses of “Veni, Vidi, Bibi” were rumoured to have been uttered by the young despot.
“Would that she only place down her goblet for but a second, I could approach and wash her hair or perhaps scrub her tiny tushy,” wept Marsha from the spectator’s gallery upon the closed lid of the near-by toilet, “But she is single-minded in her displays of unfettered gorging of water mixed with accumulated filth from the day.”
“Honestly, it’s the constant eye contact which bothers me most,” she moaned.
Sophie’s profound epicurean self-indulgence stands in stark contrast to the experiences of those around her: her older sister Patricia who yearns for access to the shower, her brother Barry who will be kept up all night with Sophie’s cries from bathwater-induced tummy aches, and her parents who just need five minutes, just five minutes for God’s sake.
And yea, Sophie finally arose from the frothing embrace of the bath, stomach ripe with the delicious flavours of the evening’s delicacies, fiddling on her Fisher Price speak-and-sing violin as the figurative Rome burned around her.
Much like Cincinnatus of old, Sophie abandoned her position of power to return to the ploughshares of her crib, content with the accomplishments of her rule; yet still with the fears of many that she would, like that same statesman, return as a dictator if ever denied access to her precious bathy yum-yum.