PYTHONLINE

I’ve gotten a late start on this whole child rearing thingy. I’m a 45-year old father of a 3-year old little girl that runs me ragged. We are deep into the throes of potty training right now and the battle is as intense as it is rather smelly. It’s a battle of wits and will. For weeks I’d ask every two minutes, ’Caty, you need to go sit on the potty?’ (By the way, grown men should never have to use the word potty) “NO” was the automatic reply whether truthful or uttered between the crotch-grabbing gyrations of a full-fledged pee-pee dance. Well we finally got past that and she can get herself in there, take a leak and get her clothes back on though she still takes great liberty with what appendage should go into what hole in her underwear. Poo is now our last great battle and she will not go down without a fight. It must be liberating to take a dump in your pants and walk around without the slightest care in the world knowing that sooner or later someone will come along and get you cleaned up. I think the aged are all putting on an act with this whole incontinence charade. They’ve lived long enough to realize that “Hey, I’ve wiped my butt for 85 years; it’s someone else’s turn”. I’m sorry, where was I ? Having made known my great displeasure regarding the deposition of fecal matter into Dora-the-Explora panties, she has taken a new tack. Just hide it somewhere. The clue is her strolling non-chalantly by either buck nekked, or wearing an entirely new outfit. Last night she came out of her bedroom with a new outfit on. Son-of-a… ‘Caty, did you poo in your pants?’ “I don’t know”. ‘Come with me Missy’. (Her ability to lie and forget so effortlessly makes me think she could probably pass the SC bar exam right now. But then she’d probably sue us and we’d end up legally bound to wipe her butt for the rest of our lives.) Well, there was her latest outfit wadded up in her bathroom hamper. I inspected the underwear and unless the ocean that Ariel the Mermaid swims in is along a bilge-dumping cruise ship route, the residue told me there was poo afoot somewhere in the house. My nose led me into her bedroom where I found the offending parcel wrapped up in a washcloth and hidden behind the door. I guess I’m too old to get angry about things like this anymore. I mean isn’t that what we all spend most of our adult lives doing? Hiding our shit and acting innocent so no one will know what we’re really like. So the battle rages on. Never thought Poo could be such an adventure.