The bath drains used to be not so good. Sanitation science hadn’t been developed then. So city planners tried to overbuild; if something was good, then more had to be better. They made the drains much bigger than it turned out was necessary. And those big drains made it possible to lose a baby.

Not that it happened often. And babies were so valued that preventative measures were taken as soon as the vulnerability was discovered. The pipes from the baths were modified to have looping traps like the sink drains of today, and errant babies couldn’t travel too far down the tube.

But you know there had to be a first time. If babies hadn’t been so precious there probably would have had to be a second or third time before action was taken, but in fact only one baby really took the bath water. His name was Rollie, and he lived.

His grandma saved him. She saw him disappear and she dove right in after him. She did it without thinking about her own safety – if she had considered she would have thought them both doomed, but what choice did she have? She couldn’t just sit there watching the bathwater swirl.

That’s when she learned how much air those big pipes held. She shot the chute right after little Rollie and they rode the drainpipe like it was some 20^th century water slide at a pleasure park. It seemed like a miracle the way their bodies stayed centered and away from the rough sides but that was just current. It was wonderful the way they continued to breathe but that was trapped air.

They tumbled out of the system, Rollie rolling face first and his grandma bumping butt-down after him, on the banks of the nearby river, as the tides were ebbing back toward the sea. That’s where they witnessed the natural water plumes. Even at 18 months Rollie was aware enough to take an impression. He grew up to design the first bath water jets, and his grandma was still alive to see that. She knew where he took his inspiration.

In fact, Rollie should have been credited with the invention. His praises are sung in a few Bathist rituals. But his plans were found and “borrowed” by a history student named Enzo Jacuzzi, and now you, like the grandmas, know how that act altered history.