Potty Humor

This post contains potty humor.

I used to get in trouble if I used potty humor, and my parents were right to discipline me swiftly and without exception for this sort of thing. If they, with five boys, had given any room to potty humor as acceptable conversation, we would have been completely unpresentable in public. (I think that we were unpresentable anyway, but at least it wasn't because of potty jokes.)

I suspect, however, that in the company of their friends, my parents indulged in copious potty anecdotes and laughs. This is what all young parents do. Young parents are stressed out, overtired, and they are constantly cleaning up the disasters their children leave inside and outside of their diapers. These disasters are both gross and funny, and when young parents get together they finally have an outlet to share their hilarious horror stories.

I remember when J and I were working at her church camp the summer before we got married and we got a lesson in this. Our conversations those days often revolved around the wedding and the life we were to have once we got married. (At that point I still needed a job of any sort.) But those weren't the only sorts of things we talked about. We were both fresh out of college, so we talked about professors, classes, and books. We debated important ideas and used lots of words that ended in "ism" or "ology." We both tried to be perfectly polite to everyone.

There weren't many other couples our age at the camp, but there was a group of a dozen or so young parents who had probably come to camp to unload full-time parenting duties of their aged 2-6 year old children. We would spend the evenings in their company, and we were flabbergasted by their conversation. We expected from this crowd, many of whom were recent seminarians, to hear more talk of "isms" and grand ideas.

All they talked about was poop.

They told diaper disaster stories, they told potty-training nightmares, they laughed at the potty language they were actively punishing, and they laughed even harder at the potty language they found too funny to punish. They also laughed at farts, making wee-wee, and all of the various names for private parts that they had to delegate as they attempted to civilize their children.

This was not a one-night conversation that happened to rabbit trail down to a silly subject. They wanted to tell poop stories, and they did it all week. Okay, I don't think they wanted to tell poop stories, but they did want to talk about their kids, and most of their kids were at that age when figuring out the potty is the most important priority.

Apparently James is approaching that age.

I was thinking about some ism or another when J, out of the blue, told me that James needed to watch me do something. (For the sake of propriety, I will call that something "number one.")

"I just read that it's a good first step for potty training. He needs to see Daddy do it before he'll want to do it himself."

I made a face, but I also knew that what J was saying made sense. James is in a particularly strong phase of doing whatever Daddy wants to do. Am I practicing? James wants to push the valves of my trumpet down too. Am I reading a book? James wants up on my lap so he can see and turn the pages. Am I writing? James needs a pen and paper right now. Am I leaving for work? James is certainly coming too. Am I taking out the trash? James will have his boots on in just a moment.

So yes, he should probably watch me do number one at some point.

"But," I said "he's already seen that."

Yes, it's true. A few months ago I really had to go as I was getting his bath ready. I REALLY had to go. And drawing a bath was not helping me to avoid thinking about it. James was standing up against the tub, but not yet walking. He was (as he still is) fascinated by the water pouring into the tub, and he was trying to reach the water that was gushing into his bath.. I figured that he'd certainly be fine to just watch the tub fill up for 30 seconds while I relieved myself. He couldn't climb in. He couldn't go anywhere. What could go wrong?

I started to "go", and then I felt something against the back of my leg. I looked down, and a tiny hand had appeared at about knee level between my legs, reaching over the toilet bowl and trying to "reach the gushing water." I gave a yell, and tried to squeeze my knees together and block him. This did not block him. It put him in a headlock. And that was how J found us. I had James' head trapped between my knees, bending backwards to keep him away, trying to keep both of our balance, and during all of this, making an attempt to "aim."

J tells me that he needs to see it again.

We tried again last night. I was ready this time, and perfectly prepared to let him be an observer but not a participant.

The experiment ended with both of us washing our hands with lots of soap.

Because James likes to be just like Daddy.