You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Potty training a human, especially a small human.
I think of this obscure topic today only because a co-worker had a baby recently.
So what you say? I say that as well. But after a god-awful amount of detailed information on breast milk, and color of baby stink, you just get consumed by it.
It was like peanut butter and I was the white bread, and the women were just lathering it on thicker and thicker until it was all stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Someone give me a damn glass of milk will ya?
Anyway, hearing new moms talk about diaper rash and pull ups genital warts, ooops, that is another conversation for another day.
Well it just had me waxing nostalgic.
This is a story I wrote a few years back, but it still makes me laugh.
It’s 2am. A vespertine haze fills the room, as my groggy eyes pry themselves open.
What the hell is that I think to myself, as I stare into the interminable black before me.
I stretch neck, lifting my heavy head off the inviting pillow.
It can’t be, but it is. It’s the unmistakable sound of liquid saturating the carpet by the foot of my bed.
My mind is racing.
Using a million cerebral fingers, my brain begins accessing the card catalogue inside in my head, trying to categorize this familiar, but strange sound.
Though I still can’t see, I hear the flow. It sounds steady and strong, like a babbling brook.
“What the hell’s that?,” I think to myself.
I reach for the window blind, slowly pulling the slats open. A ray of soothing moonlight infiltrates the vacuous darkness providing a clarity that is obscene, but also amusing.
I burst from the bed like a panther descending from a tree onto an unsuspecting zebra.
Sorry Zebra. I got a bathroom emergency going down right here, right now.
I am suddenly standing, upright, wobbly. I move closer to the tiny figure in the middle of the moonlit room.
I extended a firm, but soft hand, grabbing hold of my five year old’s shoulder.
Like a little soldier standing night watch on the wall dividing the DMZ, my boy is rigidly at attention with his pajama pants pulled down to his thighs.
His eyes are half shut, his hair standing on end. There he is in all his moonlit splendor, peeing freely and superfluously all over my freshly vacuumed carpet.
I watch in stunned amazement as the stream of urine, once a collective and singular fountain of strength, begins to diminish.
Was this really happening?
Yep.
My five year old son is still asleep, his eyes shut, his face blank.
That’s when I determine he is sleep walking, or in this case sleep peeing.
Strange but true.
Like a moon lit peep show, I watched him finish, pull up his Spiderman pajamas and stumble back to his bedroom.
“Wow!” I exclaim. “That was carnival show weird”
Let’s hear the new moms top that one.
And that is crazy.