Regular Life

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Potty Pooper

I’m about to be indelicate. This topic pretty much requires me to be gross, so I ask forgiveness now.

Saturday, we were going to a birthday party scheduled to start at 3 p.m. Taking Ben to such an event without his having a nap would have been reckless, and we did not want a repeat of the birthday party we attended the previous weekend. So, although our schedule did not allow it, I put Ben down for his nap at about 2:20 and he finally went to sleep at 2:45. He woke at about 4:45. We were going to be very late.

Then, in a display of timing only toddlers can muster, Ben said he wanted to poop in the potty.

Standing in his room under a barrage of our asking repeatedly if he needed to poop in the potty before the birthday party, Ben recanted and said, “I need to poop here, and then stand on it.”

We convinced him otherwise, and quickly but gently set him on the special little seat that goes on top of the regular toilet.

Within a minute, a vein bulged out on Ben’s neck and I heard a splash.

“You did it, Ben. Great job!” I said. I was surprised to feel a tear trying to escape my eye. Obviously I had something in it.

Ben smiled and said, “I went poop in the potty.”

His mommy and I praised him again and then Shannon asked if he needed to go any more.

“I could go like this,” he said, and then made strained grunting noises.

Shannon left the room to laugh, but I remained seated on the bathroom floor to make sure Ben was finished. When he got down and stood on his step stool, Shannon and I peered around him into the bowl.

We were amazed. Our only prior viewing of Ben’s “results” came after he had thoroughly smashed it up in his diaper through sitting, walking, and such, until one of us caught a whiff and changed his diaper. He was not the type to come tell us when he had pooped.

It was as if an adult had used the bathroom, and then sat Ben on the toilet for a prank. All that time, I thought that Ben produced diaper sludge because he was a toddler, but it’s clear to me that had I just smashed my dookie, it would have looked exactly the same.

Shannon looked at me and said, “Did you see that turd?”

Ben turned to look into the water, and said, “That’s a turd.”

It was the closest I had come to reliving those days when my brother and I amazed each other with what we had just “made.” Man, I miss the 1990’s.

I called my dad to tell my parents the news. He was on his way back from a dental meeting. In the vehicle with him were at least two other men. When he said, “Tell Ben that Papa’s proud of him for pooping in the potty,” I heard one of the guys in the background laugh and proclaim, “Well, I pooped in the potty just this morning.”

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