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February
/ March 2006 Contest Results |
Toilet Training
Times Six
By
Sara Schlussel, New York
I am not a
plumber. I have no experience with weepy faucets, drippy pipes or
trickling garden hoses. So why did G-d put me in charge of regulating
six free-flowing urinary tracts?
By the time my
little spritzers turn 12 months, people start urging me to introduce
them to 'The Toilet.' I wouldn’t normally introduce my children to a
stranger who gurgles water in his lungs, stores sewage in his brain, and
flushes each time you touch his funnybone… but when my son’s diaper
floats in a flood, and relatives start calling him ‘Noah’; When people
mistake my child for a watering can, and use him to sprinkle the lawn;
When the meteorologist predicts the tail end of a storm, and people put
their raincoats on to hold him: It is potty time.
On my boy’s
second birthday, I took him to Coney Island. There were booths spread
out on a fairground near the boardwalk, where fun-seekers could test
their skills. I stopped at a table that had clowns lined up, with
balloons attached to their heads. The challenge was to squirt water from
a toy gun into the clown’s mouth, fill the balloon until it popped, and
win a little stuffed snake. I figured that booth was my opportunity. I
gave the man a buck, put the gun in my son’s hands and said, ‘Point your
pistol, and aim in that hole...’ The clown should have come with an
umbrella.
I vowed to keep
my kid in Ultra Leakguards until he was old enough for combat.
Kids love water.
If I let them, they will happily stand at my kitchen sink for hours,
letting their hands dangle limply under the flow. They will fill ceramic
mugs with water and shower each other with brotherly love. They will
fill our inflatable beach ball with water, and puncture it inside the
car on the way to a volleyball game. They will fill the laundry basket
with water, and wash their doll’s hair in it with Murphy soap. So why
does this particular bowl of water literally frighten the doo doo out of
them?
When it’s time
to train my daughter, I sit on the bathtub rim for hours, making sure
she doesn’t fall into the commode hole. We just sit there, looking at
one another until fungus starts growing between our toes. But it isn’t
until I finally give up and let my child stand, that her bowels band
together and form a movement.
Toilet training
does for mothers what pigeons do for windshields.
As the drill
sergeant for mini-marine corps basic water training, I have the dubious
option of laundering 20 urine-soaked tidy-whities a day, or letting my
recruits run around bare bottomed until they graduate from bathroom boot
camp. Either way, I’m constantly running after them yelling ‘Hold your
fire!’
Leaving the
house during the potty period is a mother’s wet dream.
Once a toddler
learns to outgrow his dread of the bathroom, the bathroom becomes his
lifelong friend. To this day, my husband visits the John far more often
than he does any of his other buddies. I know where to find him when the
chaos level in our house hits a 10 on the Richter scale…
Just a few days
ago, I applied for my NYS Master Plumber license. With 12 years
experience in the field of leaking bladders, water pressure, clogged
toilets and backup sewer service, I will graciously be serving the
Brooklyn community for as long as my kids’ hind quarters keep turning
into saturated fat...
http://www.pen-and-paint.com
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