You want to know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!
POTTY TRAINING:
I found this old story about my now potty trained kids. Since everyone at my work place is wiping someone else’s ass right now, I thought this was particularly valuable to post.
Enjoy.
POTTY TRAINING: It’s a biological necessity that binds humanity from an early age.
Regardless of race or creed or socioeconomic station in life, Potty Training is one of the early universal stumbling blocks that each of us must clear in order to gain acceptance.
If potty training were a mathematical equation, it would be infinity divided by one. A figure so complex, yet so simple, that every human can, and must answer it. It is, in its purest form, an equation of necessity.
In every culture; from the Great Wall to the Great Pyramids, potty training is a celebrated plateau of social development. Along with an opposable thumb, and ability to reason, it separates us from the animals.
For youngsters, it’s a right of passage that brings feelings of self worth and accomplishment. For some parents, potty training is a chance to open the garbage can for the first time in three years, without being bludgeoned by noxious fumes of sickly pudding that have been fermenting in a sour sauce of poisonous vinegar.
Potty Training can be an economical windfall where the plastic absorbency of Pampers and Huggies, which have kept your child and your wallet dry for years, can finally be passed over in the super market.
That brings me to my personal potty training extravaganza. My son is trying, but you know how boys can be. Bad aim, a wobble here, an errant stream there, and suddenly the back of the tank, the floor, the bathroom scale, all need a good wiping down.
Number 1 is one issue. Number 2? That’s a horse of another color.
OK, I’m just going to go commando for this next section.
Sometimes, I wish the boy still used a diaper. That doesn’t sound very progressive does it?
I don’t care! Pottty Training is just plain ass work. Like I don’t have enough of that! It was easier to just wipe him down, towel him off, dispose of the nastiness and wrap him up in a brand new pair of Huggies.
Now that he’s older, he’s starting to wipe himself. It would be less disastrous if we let him cook Thanksgiving turkey with an acetylene torch.
The problems are many. First he grabs so much toilet paper, he looks like Carmen Miranda. I wonder whether half a roll of toilet tissue will even flush? I’ve caught him rolling half the roll around his arm. On a good visit, he looks like he’s trying to wipe himself with a three foot baton of cotton candy.
The boy definitely has his own style. First he bends forward at the waist clutching the absorbent tissue high over his head. He looks like the Iraqi Army waving the white flag of surrender.
While he struggles to draw breath into his compressed lungs, he awkwardly reaches back with his clump of tissue. Then, with the adroit skills of a Hill Billy slurping moonshine through a stalk of grass, he begins dabbing at the soiled area. It’s like letting an orangutan do bypass surgery.
He flails wildly at his rear end, like a pink tailed cockatoo strutting for a mate. He slides around on the toilet seat like a buttered gyroscope. Not having mastered the art of folding toilet tissue, the second and third wipes usually result in a dark stain up the side of one of his little butt cheeks.
Suddenly he’s Salvador Dali, and his ass a painting on a surreal canvas of skin. His zestful and misguided brush strokes quickly dot the flesh tone landscape of his butt cheek, lower thigh and back, with brown rows of melting clocks.
What starts out as a little boy has suddenly transformed into an EPA super fund site. “Daddy, did I get it all?,” he asks innocently. “Sure, little buddy,” I’ll say, while I begin back tracking over the trouble spots. “You’re doing great, and you’re really trying.”
You don’t won’t to discourage young potty trainers. Bad wiping can lead to a stigmatized adult who ends up climbing a clock tower with a rifle.
We don’t need any more of that in America.
And that is crazy.