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Life Is What Happens Posting Date: Mar 16 2008 12:33AM When you were a child and the scope of your world was defined by the cartoons you watched on Saturday mornings and the streets you were not allowed to cross in the afternoons, the universe seemed like a pretty simple place. It was divided into three categories of people, things and experiences: the good, the bad and the to-be-determined. As a kid, you didn’t know much, so the categories were shockingly small.
The good category, for example, probably included your mother and father, not quite all of your aunts, your grandparents if they gave you money, your best friend across the street, cartoons, candy and new shoes that made you run faster. Christmas was probably in this category as well, along with pencil crayons and cough syrup that tasted like oranges.
The bad category was similarly brief. It was composed of things like barking dogs, green pepper, brushing your teeth and anyone named Nelson. Throw in bedtime, your purple cords with the knee patch and your old shoes that made you run slower, and the category was pretty much complete.
In the to-be-determined category, you placed things like your siblings and everything in the world that you were yet to experience. The middle category was huge. In fact, the process of growing up is largely an exercise in exploration and categorization. Before long, the gigantic middle category starts to shrink as you find a home in either the good or bad category for things like draft beer, photocopiers, silk underwear and American Idol.
Thinking back to the early days, however, to the days before you knew about viruses, terrorists, gang violence and global warming, there was one thing, one evil, nasty thing that all children would have said was easily the king of the bad category.
Poop.
The absolute worst thing your childhood self could conceive of was poop – crap, turds, number two, BM. You would have nightmares about seeing it, smelling it, touching it, hearing it or, heaven forbid, tasting it. It was worse than scum and villainy wrapped in a jacket of putridity.
Poop was as bad as it got.
I wonder what my younger self would think of me now. Poop has become a big part of my life. With three dogs and a new baby, poop is elemental to my very existence. I change it, wipe it, bag it, scoop it and sponge it out. I rinse it, soap it, scrape it and occasionally even crawl around on the carpet trying to sniff it out if I suspect there may have been an accident. I hold my daughter’s bum up to my nose to smell it. I leap over backyard snowbanks in slippers to keep my dogs from eating it.
John Lennon once sang, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” I never planned to devote so much of my life to poop. I really didn’t. In university, when I was imagining my future, not once did I envision an integral role for feces of any kind.
The funny thing is that my world is still divided into those three categories and somehow, poop got moved out of the bad category. Now poop is a matter of context. A dog poop collected neatly from the park in a biodegradable poop bag is a good thing. A dog poop at the top of the front stairs is bad.
That makes sense, certainly, but here’s the weird part … No matter the context, my daughter’s poop is, by some odd miracle, a good thing. Leaking out through the diaper to stink up the kitchen? No problem. Stuck up between her shoulder blades when I’m out of pre-moistened wipes? No big deal. Funking up the new car smell during a trip to Toronto? Way to go!
Suddenly, poop has lost its power. It has turned from the most evil substance on earth into something kind of cute and reassuringly indicative of a healthy baby’s digestion. All it took was about thirty years of maturity and the world’s most gorgeous baby girl.
Now farts on the other hand, those were awesome way back when and they are just as fun today. |
