Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back In The Playroom

My neighbor came over yesterday. She is a very nice young woman, or I should say, considerably younger than me. She has a very cute little boy by the name of Bruce, 2. Bruce is a cherub-faced blondie, a rascal reminiscent of my own children, now 5 and 9. His latest obsession is garbage trucks, much to my surprise, and I just happened to have one of my son's old toys, a big green trash truck, with lights and sirens and a voice that announces, "load 'em up!" at the push of a button. Bruce was ecstatic to receive such a prize and I was over-joyed to eliminate another dust-collector from my household.





Bruce and his mom, Janet often come over to play. Usually, they end up in our carport with all the riding toys. I've told them they have all access whether we are home or not...the carport is filled with trikes, big wheels, skate boards, and pogo-sticks. It never fails to amuse me that my kids, at their ages, rush out to greet this tiny boy, just learning to talk, not yet potty trained, dwarfed by the towering basketball hoop. My kids seem to welcome playmates of all ages, including our other neighbor, Lillian, who is a writer and retired teacher at the ripe old age of 91. Age discriminate they're not!





And so, as the kids were heading home from Lillian's house yesterday for a visit, they intercepted Janet and Bruce in the yard, inviting them inside. The door swung open, and there I stood in my slippers, my addled brain pumped full of allergy and cough medication, bottle of wine and opener in hand. "Hello!" I blustered. Not one to worry about people's perceptions, I offered Janet a glass of wine and a seat. "Sure!" she said, seemingly glad for the invitation. We had visited several times before while the kids played, but had rarely had the opportunity to really sit down and talk. I think it was the cough medicine and gravity that got the better of me.





I had already lit candles in the den, making the room very cozy and welcoming (for myself). My husband works and is gone a LOT, so I have taken to doing things I might normally do for us for myself: having a glass of wine, lighting candles, playing mood music. It sounds crazy as those are things you might do for yourself anyway, but it's amazing how quickly you can get out of the habit when you've been accustomed to doing things together for so long and that's suddenly taken away. As I entered the room, I wondered if Janet thought it was strange I had set such a scene for myself, or if as a mom herself, she appreciated it. I went with the latter. I was just grateful that my husband has a job and that I had fallen into some impromptu adult company.





Janet and I sat down on the sofa, new Walmart glasses of wine in hand, and began to chat. I admitted I had been sacked out on the couch watching 'Sex and the City 2' while the kids were gone. I asked her if she had seen it. She hesitantly said, "yes," not offering her opinion of the 'film'. I was not so cautious. "It was like watching a train wreck. What a piece of shit!" I blurted out, not realizing the powerful foreshadowing my words held, the wine and cold meds in full swing. She looked relieved. "Oh, I'm so glad you said that! I thought you were gonna say you liked it," she gushed. Nothing like a little cussing to open up the floor. I don't think I watched more than thirty minutes of that damn movie, and I heard two of the worst lines of dialogue in movie history: 1) Lawrence of my labia, and 2) You have a camel camel-toe! Who wrote that trash? The movie itself is supposed to be about female empowerment and the oppression of Middle-eastern women, right? I found myself seriously offended. Not as a woman but as a writer.


We were quite engrossed in our analysis of the film, when Janet stopped mid-sentence. "Uh-oh," she said, leaping out of her seat. Glancing over at Bruce, I could spot the dark stain spreading on his khaki pants. "I guess we better go," Janet said as she wrestled with the child trying to convince him it was time to leave. I told Janet not to worry as I handed her a towel. "You can leave him here while you run next door and get him a change of clothes," I offered. Janet studied Bruce, who was squatting in front of the toy microwave, totally oblivious to our presence and his soggy drawers. "Are you sure?" Janet asked, eyes pleading. "Yeah, he'll be fine! Go on!" I waved her out the door.

Janet and I had briefly discussed potty training several days prior. I explained to her that my method of potty training had been repeating the mantra "he'll figure out by the time he's ten" over and over and over. I really had attempted to potty train my son for one day, and one day only. After I realized that the only sure-fire way to get my son to pee in the potty was to chain him to it, I gave up. I put him in regular underwear and let him wallow in it, literally. He proved to be a quick learner. Really in just a matter of days, he had figured it out. My daughter took a little while longer, although I used the same approach and it did eventually work. I believe whole heartedly in the old fashioned method of putting them in underwear and rubber pants. The good Lord knows I've thrown away my fair share of kid's underwear - I'd rather buy more than have to wash them by hand. Janet had told me she had resorted to giving Bruce a cookie every time he used the potty though I knew another woman who used the bribery tactic and ended up three years later with a 5 year old M&M addict who shit in his pants just to piss her off. No thanks. I gave my advice to Janet gently and hoped she would follow suit. I think she had good intentions, she just forgot the underwear. And the rubber pants, for God's sake. You can't forget the rubber pants, man!!!

In the process of successful potty training, the underwear serves to hold the yucky stuff against the child's body so as to create and adverse response. The rubber pants serve to protect your carpets. Each is essential.

Janet returned minutes later, Bruce never noticing she was gone. She quickly changed him into his fresh pants sans underwear and rejoined me in the den. We picked right up where we had left off, enjoying the wine and the conversation. We relaxed. For a moment. Until Bruce called out from the playroom, "Mom!" We both ignored him. He hollered again, "Mom!" I could see him out of the corner of my eye, his little body frozen, his sweat-pant clad legs spread. "Bruce, Mommy is talking," Janet calmly replied, looking at me for my approval as she was being a 'good mommy' by not letting her child interrupt her adult conversation. I nodded my assent as I felt she needed it. She smiled and continued talking until Bruce, still standing in the same spot as before, quietly spoke from the playroom, "I pooped on the floor." Janet and I stood in unison and said, "what?!", our eyes searching the playroon for the evidence. Janet promptly scooped Bruce up and headed towards the patio door, which she opened trying to expel the stink. As my two children began dry heaving, cowering in the corner of the room, my concern turned to one of them projectile vomiting into the bookcase, which would not be nearly as tidy a clean-up.

I sized up the enemy. The turd was sizable and mushy, though fairly compact. I yelled, "I'll get a plastic bag! Stay right where you are!" Trying to remain calm and reassure my new mom next door neighbor. While she was mortified that her child had pooped on my floor, I was worried that she would be so embarrassed she wouldn't come back. I needed all the adult reinforcements I could muster! "I'm so sorry!" Janet called to me, now armed with a roll of toilet paper and a plastic bag. "It's no problem, " I said a huge grin plastered to my face, "it happens to the best of us." I smiled up at her as I picked up the poop and placed it gingerly in the bag. "This carpet has seen it's fair share of pee, puke, and poop, believe me. It's no big deal," I said, and I meant it.

After shooing the older children out of the playroom, retching all the way, I ushered Janet with Bruce held tightly in her grasp to the bathroom, where I wiped the majority of poop from his leg and foot, and Janet's hand. I gave her a damp wash-cloth and bid her adieu. We had discerned in the process of cleaning him off that he had in fact shit in his pants and it had rolled out the bottom of his pants leg, thus requiring a full-scale hose-down and bath at home.

As she left, I surveyed the scene. I sprayed the carpet with cleaner and let it sit. The children cautiously came out of their hiding places, holding their noses. "Is it gone?" my son asked. "Yes," I answered, "it's gone, silly. There's no reason to be afraid of a little poop." I realized my son's reaction to the incident had been much the same as mine to the movie, disgusted yet unable to look away. A sick and twisted fascination - perhaps born from his nostalgic memory of being a carefree baby in diapers and my mis-appointed fantasy of being stranded in the middle of a picturesque desert covered in haute couture and even hotter man-servants. All the same, we cleaned up the playroom and turned off the t.v., my son asking, "what's for dinner?"