So here’s a real gross story.
I’d planned on writing about something else entirely for today’s installment, but as I’m sitting here watching Shaquille O’Neal get put through a table in a wrestling match, I thought maybe instead I should tell you about my kid’s latest, greatest accomplishment.
Bathtime is my thing, but we’re just now getting to the point where it’s kind of fun to play around with Benji as he’s in the tub. So sometimes I get distracted; either by my phone or by talking to Erin, I may not always be 100% attentive.
Sue me.
Well, I was answering a question that Erin asked me tonight and turned to look at Benji, who’d gotten very quiet, and I saw him on his hands and knees. This isn’t out of the ordinary. He crawls around in the tub a lot, especially on bubble bath nights.
What was out of the ordinary, however, was the large turd just kind of…hanging out of his butt.
Benji was on his hands and knees trying to poop. Well, actively pooping. In the bathtub.
I immediately screamed, “No, no, no!” in rapid succession and started to panic. I didn’t want it to fall in the water; that would mean bleaching the whole fucking tub and having to fish through poop soup to get it out. As Erin ran in, I did what any sane person would do, or so I thought. I picked up my slippery, wet kid and threw him on the toilet, praying to God and Jesus and anyone else that the poop would stay “attached” to his butt instead of falling to the floor.
I more or less tossed him onto the toilet as Erin came around the corner and looked down to see that I did not, in fact, get Benji on the toilet in time for him to poop in it. He pooped on it. Right in front of the seat cover sat this…gargantuan poop.
“Why didn’t you just grab toilet paper to pull the poop off? Why did you pick him up and put him on the toilet?”
“I don’t know! I panicked!”
“Why are you yelling?” Erin asked.
“I don’t know!”
The whole thing reminded me of a conversation between my friend Jono and our old boss Brian from my insurance brokerage days. They were comparing notes on kids, and since Jono’s little girl wasn’t that much older than Brian’s, they were discussing gross kid stuff. I couldn’t really contribute to the conversation—it’d only been a few months since everything happened with Charlotte, so I honestly tried to tune it out—but it stuck in my mind.
“Has she pooped in the tub yet?” Jono asked.
“Nah,” Brian said.
“She will. And it’s gonna be gross.”
Toilet training is wild. Have you ever stopped to think about it? Someone had to literally teach you how to pee and poop in a toilet. How to recognize that it was gonna happen and then get to a place where you could do it. I think about it a lot, mainly in terms of asking “Why is this so difficult? Don’t you know when you’re gonna do it?" and “Why do you hate sitting on the toilet so much?”
It takes like 30 seconds, right? It’s not like he has a phone to distract him. Just sit on the toilet, do your thing, and let me wipe your butt. You won’t have to poop your pants anymore and it’ll make life so much more comfortable.
Instead, I have to watch like a hawk to make sure my kid doesn’t drop a deuce in a tub full of lukewarm water.
Recommended Reading
My library hold for Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts finally came in last night, and although I’m only two chapters in, I’m really enjoying it so far. I’ve had a hard time focusing on books this month, so it’s nice for something to grab my attention and keep me reading and off of TikTok.
The other major things I’ve read this week that have stuck with me include:
I started paying for Anne Helen Petersen’s Culture Study newsletter this week because I really enjoy it for its insights, and this latest installment about imaging what remote work looks like after the pandemic is very smart. It’s really important to remember that however you feel about working from home on a semi-permanent basis (spoiler alert: it kind of fucking sucks), things will improve and we’ll be able to work remotely from parks and coffee shops and other places sometime in the future.
A big part of the psychological (and literal physical) harm that’s come out of the pandemic has been the direct result of mixed messages from government advisors and health advisors. So much of that is touched on here in this Atlantic piece from Zeynep Tufekci. I’m guilty of being a scold as much as anyone, and I’m wondering if all that stress has done immeasurable harm to my capacity for empathy.
This piece about far-right news sources and how much traction they get on Facebook is a really important thing that underscores what we all know: Facebook is extremely harmful and detrimental to the very fabric of our national discourse.
Musical Interlude
Here’s a playlist with a bunch of shoe gaze and 80’s alternative music. I listened to it a lot last year and got quite a bit of work done, back when I was able to focus on anything for more than five minutes at a time.
Final Thoughts
I ordered the “new” crispy chicken sandwich from McDonald’s tonight and it was fucking terrible. We eat Chick-fil-A every week as part of our routine on Saturdays and, man, it just pales in comparison. I can’t express to you how terrible it was. I was legitimately angry about it. I wouldn’t recommend it.
You know what else I wouldn’t recommend? What I did last year: had my wisdom teeth removed.
Here’s how that went.