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Saturday, May 11, 2013

Potty Shmotty

Dear Mr. Baby:

Over the course of, say, a year now (which I realize is almost one full half of your life and therefore entirely too much time to talk about) people have been dropping subtle and not-so-subtle hints about this Potty Thing. There is your affable Indian doctor, who has no idea how much you should be eating but knows that all children in India are potty trained at six months, and while she fails at least fifty percent of the time to tell us that the appointment is over, or tell me what you weigh or what vaccination she's giving you, she does manage to speak for a full two minutes on the subject of diapers and why you shouldn't be in them. Why? Because kids in India are not. Were you expecting a scientific explanation, or some kind of argument that it matters, in exchange for listening patiently to that malarky? Well think again. Then there was the ER doctor from Jordan, who you liked because he gave you a popsicle, and who seemed to think that a sane woman, even one with a potty-trained two-year-old, would sit around with a concussed child in a Canadian ER (where your minimum wait time, if you've done something really awful, like cut off your own head, is two hours) with no diaper on, because what are the chances, anyway, of being called in to see the doctor while you're standing around in a toilet with two bags of shit and a whiny child with a giant headache who can't sit properly on the fucking toilet without falling in? What are the chances of him needing to crap at just that particular moment? Yes what was I thinking putting a diaper on you?
No offense to the people of India or Jordan, or of the menagerie of other countries from whence this shitpot advice has flowed like the unleashed bowels of a two-year old, but those countries don't really seem to be at the forefront of...well, anything. So Mr. Baby, you feel free to ignore these assholes, and I'll feel free to tell them to shut the hell up.

But then what's this? Here comes my mother, my own mother, who blithely insists that she has no idea what she did, and everything will be fine, but so very sneakily mails underwear to you. She just ''thought it was so cute.'' It's a subtle attack, Mr. Baby, but don't get sucked in by it, even if they are covered in Thomas the Tank Engine decals. Because all this means for me is more and shittier laundry. (Thanks mom!)

And of course we've heard from the charming but eerily Borgish nation of Poland, who all have exactly the same thoughts about this and almost everything related to housekeeping or childrearing (I mean, like, exactly the same thoughts). Which they don't make very clear, because making things clear is not very Polish, but suffice it to say that 38,216,000 people in Poland and large sections of Chicago and Toronto believe you should have stopped wearing diapers precisely 2.108e7 seconds ago.

And then there are the Americans. Yes, the supportive and flexible Americans, who don't want to tell you what to do, and certainly don't think it means anything, but do not hesitate to get out a Power Point presentation which places their child's green line on a better trajectory into The Future than your child's purple one, based on Potty Training and How Johnny Felt About It.

Here's what I think about Potty Training, Mr. Baby, and since I and your father are the only ones who change all these fucking diapers, I think we should be the final say:

1) I think it's useful to define what Potty Trained means to me. It means I do not have to stare at your ass all day and ask you every twenty seconds if you feel like you need to pee or poop.
I do not have piss or shit all over my floors or penises on my couch.
I do not have to play the game: locate a safe place with no small items or sharp objects for this baby while running and throwing clothes off of the toddler before...too late.

2)Do whatever the fuck you want. On the scale of inconvenience, wiping some shit off of your butt with this variety of stuff made specifically for wiping is somewhere at the very bottom of an extensive list of Things That Are Annoying About Two Year Olds. This is a pretty simple thing. I have to summon very little patience for it, in comparison to the patience I require for all the other bizarre, illogical, unreasonable, agitating discussions I have to have with you about the temperature of your hand-washing water, the way your socks have been placed on your feet, which shoes you are going to wear, whether or not you will eat this or that blueberry but not any which are touching strawberries but all strawberries and no kiwis today, even if you asked for all of them. Or for all of the times you kick me in the face ''accidentally'' or stand on my feet or leave blocks, also ''accidentally'' right under my feet, or make the most irritating sound ever heard because it is ''fun'' or negate every single sentence I say or cry uncontrollably because I handed you a paper towel instead of a kleenex when you asked for a paper towel. Compared to having someone touch me all. day. long. and spit on me and bang maracas and ask 300,000 questions a minute and refuse to do every. single. thing. I ask. 24 hours a day....wiping some shit off of a bum is just not something I give a flying shit about. And I'd love to hear someone's explanation of how cleaning shit off the floor or out of a potty is somehow better than wiping it off of an ass. At some point kid, it's all just become shit to me. So keep it contained, I say.      

In other words, Mr. Baby, feel free to keep on shitting in diapers until you actually possess the mental control required to A) realize you are going to shit, B) notify me you are going to shit and C) get to to a potty in time to shit. Because otherwise, I just don't feel like running around watching your ass for you all day, nor can I say that this sitting around in the cold bathroom forcing everyone to be bored out of their fucking mind for no reason at all every day is very much fun. No matter how much everyone else (who have never once been ASKED to change a goddam diaper) might think it's going to propel you to the apex of some kind of extraordinary success as a human being to do it now instead of two months from now. If you're going to get on top pf something, buddy, why don't you try sleeping until 6:00 every morning?