Truth bombs…well, bombs anyway.

the war zone. a place were death sleeps.

I made my daughter Sage cry the other day.  I did it without yelling, screaming, threatening, scaring or anything.  Well, that’s not completely true.  I may have scared her.  Perhaps I should backup.

Backup. That’s where the problem begins.  While all of this is pretty gross, it’s true, right?  When I poop it smells like poop, just like everyone else.  As much as some like to think, no one has poop that smells like anything but poop.

I stay up late sometimes.  In fact, the last month and a half I have put in some serious time at good old Modern Bird Studios (shameless plug) rendering me a painting zombie.  You see, I had an my first solo art show, a Father’s Day rush, and regular orders.  It left me the shell of a man averaging 4 hours of sleep a night for about a month and a half.  I know, I know, you’re asking yourself, what does this have to do with poop?  Well, as it just so happens, when I stay up late and don’t get enough sleep, my stomach hurts.  It will hurt for days until I get enough sleep, but a side effect of that is needing to poop.

Why, Lame Sauce, are you speaking of your BM’s so freely?  We can tip toe around the fact that we drop dueces.  We do it.  Its life.  In our home, we are honest and straight forward to our children about such things.  When sage started pointing out the two dots on her chest, I told her what is was: nipples.  When she talked about poop coming out of her va jay jay (the word we use for her girl bits. Actually she just calls it jay jay.), we had a nice long talk about buttholes.  The last thing I want here is confusion about such things.  They’re body parts, and functions that happen.  It is what it is.

So, my daughter, my beautiful charming sharp daughter poops like any other 4 year old poops.  I’m not sure if that’s exactly true.  Her poo stinks.  I mean REALLY stinks.  The girl can stink up an entire floor to our house.  I wish I was joking, but my gag reflex won’t let me joke about such things.  Because of this, I figure “hey, if I gotta go, I gotta go! Nothing will stink worse than Sage’s poop!” This is not completely true.  While I’m not sure that her stinky poo is a hereditary thing, I’m no slouch either (I hear women swooning across this great land after that statement).  To be fair, the girl beats out anyone in this house 9 our of 10 times.

I digress.  I had to go.  I went in her bathroom.  It was awful.  A war zone.  I almost called out for a medic.  It smelled of death and broken dreams.

About 5 minutes after, and even with the fan running, I hear a whimpering.  I come around the corner to see my daughter making the face.  The trout mouth face.  You know the one where the edges of her mouth are pointed downwards putting her mouth into a huge frown.  At the same time her nose is crinkled up.  That is one of those things she does that I love, but coupled with the trout mouth, it’s disturbing.  She’s got crocodile tears.  ”What’s wrong, baby?” I ask her.  She has this ability to answer in the most agonizing whiney voice ever: “Dad, it stinks so bad in there! It’s so gross! I can’t go in there!” I’m more amused than embarrassed.  I’ve been wiping this girls ass for going on 4 years now, and being embarrassed by such things seems trivial.  She begins to cry.  Clearly her instincts are telling her that the smell of death and broken dreams are not to be trifled with.  I suddenly wonder to myself if she knows who the culprit is.  She does. With tears running down her cheek she says, “Dad, what did you do?” I suddenly feel a presence and look up to see my wife who is standing in the hallway, face bright red, contorted to hold in what I can only assume is hysterical laughter.  Her daughter is crying, she is laughing.  Any other time I might be critical of such a juxtaposition, but today, I get it.  My stinky poo has made my daughter cry.

I suddenly have a flashback to the last 4 years.  The various smells and fecal matter that have graced my nose, my hands and fingers.  She pooed right on me once.  She was an infant and I was changing her diaper, holding up her legs when a dollop of poo shot out of her precious and tiny anus to smack against the palm of my hand.  The green goopy tar of an infant in one hand, a pooey baby in the other. I think of the time I was wiping her little buns.  When her little poo dropped, it splashed her little buns.  When I wiped, the super absorbent toilet paper got wet, my finger slipping through, and me getting a finger of her poo on it.  And so it goes and goes.  After all of that, here stands my daughter in tears because I stunk up her bathroom with my upset stomach.

I smile, and coax her in to do her business.  Payback, baby girl, payback.