Shit

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I was in that state between sleep and awake this morning, trying to decide if it was too early for me to greet the day. I pressed my internal snooze button and drifted into my semi-awake state. My mind began to free associate and ended up thinking about shit and how I have been affected by shit in my life.

I didn’t really spend a lot of time thinking about shit during my formative years. I did have a couple of unfortunate occurrences when I was tiny that have had a profound effect on my psyche and they still haunt me to this day. The less said about them, the better. I do remember during high school I had a buddy (Don) who told me one day that he was quite regular, almost like clockwork really. He told me that with any luck, he would live to be 85 and by then he will have shit about 62,000 times, give or take a few due to sickness or a change in his metabolism. I didn’t have a response to that at the time, but now after all of these years I can honestly say that I still have no idea why he would have told me that. I don’t really know why he would have done the calculations in the first place. I was amazed that he shit twice a day, every day.

Arwen’s birth brought me a new understanding of shit. I can remember changing her on the living room carpet when a geyser of shit shot across the room. That was the last time I didn’t cover her up when we were changing diapers. Once we were having a bath together, it being easier to wash her holding her on my lap and having Louise do the scrubbing. I was rinsing her off when I noticed that the water had become lumpy. Ahhhh….Shit! Surprisingly, it happened once more before I stopped getting in the tub with her.

You get pretty used to being hands on with shit when you have babies, but just as soon as they get toilet trained, you redevelop an aversion to getting shit on your hands. The next time shit rears its ugly head is when your kids get shit faced drunk and call you to pick them up at 2:00AM. You find yourself incredibly proud that they called rather than drive, but it is still 2:00 AM! I remember Maegan getting shit faced drunk and climbing into a construction site where she somehow damaged one of her fingers. It was a long time in physio, and I’m not sure if it is 100% yet. Okay, that’s not really about shit, but what the hell.

It is funny that when Hurricane came along, I didn’t have any problem changing diapers. It was much more fun than changing the diapers of my own kids. Maybe it was the thought that I was helping Arwen by giving her a little break, made it easier to take. Tornado came along and it still wasn’t a problem at all. It just occurred to me that I no longer have an issue with shit. If I get some on my hands, there is soap and hot water to take care of the mess.

There was a time this summer when Aunt Maegan and I had the boys at a playground after an afternoon of swimming in a public pool. The playground was at a school that was under construction, so we were pretty isolated. Hurricane came up to us and said he had to go to the wash room. I said he should just go over to that tree and pee. There was a look of panic on his face and he said “I HAVE TO POO!!!” Maegan and I matched his look of panic and our eyes just locked for a second or two before we realized there was nothing we could do, but make the best of it. I took Hurricane over to a large tree and gave him some very quick instructions on how to shit against a tree. It’s kind of funny how a six year old can crap as big as a man. I had to go to the car to get a bag to clean up the mess. It did occur to me that I could leave it, but it was obvious that some homeless people used the tree to drink and hang out. They have enough problems in life without sitting in someone’s shit.

I imagine that it won’t be too many more decades before I have a diaper, and I am not really looking forward to that. I am sure I’ll deal with the shit the way I have throughout my life, holding my breath and working with quiet efficiency to get the job done ASAP.