Pooper

Jack has discovered his pooper. During diaper changes, he seems unable to refrain from sticking his finger in it. I wouldn't be worried, but it's one of the fingers he's fond of sucking on a regular basis. The wife is convinced that he will contract some terrible disease, like ringworm, or roto-virus. I think he must be some kind of prodigy, as I don't remember discovering my pooper until I was three or so.

All of my revelations seemed to come in the bathtub. That's when I had the time to really study my own body. When I was eight, for example, I discovered my urethra. Oh, sure I had been aware for some time that there was a hole at the end of my pee pee that expelled urine, sometimes at inopportune moments. But on that day, I thought, "If stuff can come out of it, can't stuff go in it?" So, on a whim, I decided to fill up an empty squirt bottle with dirty bath water, line up the holes, and let 'er rip.

Keep in mind that this was eight year old dirty bath water. The kind that leaves a ring around the tub and makes your grandmother complain endlessly while she scrubs the porcelain with Brillo pads and Comet on her sexagenarian hands and knees. Full of bacteria and germs and quite possibly some parasites of unknown origins. This was actually fun for awhile and captivated my attention for three or four full squirts.

The ramifications could not be foreseen by my eight year old brain. I simply lacked the intuitiveness to realize that some orifices should forever remain as "exit only." Less than forty-eight hours later, I realized that this had been a terrible mistake, a horrific miscalculation, a misguided experiment gone awry. I had given myself a kidney infection.

There appeared to be only one symptom, and thankfully so, because it was the single most painful sensation I had experienced up to that point in my young life. It was as though every time I peed, I was peeing red hot molten burning long grains of brown wild rice. It was so bad that I didn't want to pee at all. And yet, I had to pee all the time. I simply could not hold it. It kept coming and coming. It was as if I had drank fourteen jabenero beers, if there were such a thing. It was, in a word, awful.

The only good thing that came out of this experience is that I got to get out of school for a day and spend time with my Dad at the doctor's office. But, of course, the only way my case could be diagnosed was for me to pee in a cup, which I was sure would melt when filled up with molten rice. It didn't, and I lived to tell the tale. So now, I have a choice to make. Do I try to keep my son from making the same mistakes that I have made, or do I let him learn from his own mistakes? After all, isn't that just a part of growing up? I certainly think so. And besides, what could be a better birthday gift for a two year old than a squirt bottle, really? Knock yourself out, kid. Nobody will know but you, me and the doctor. Unless you decide one day to blog about it, that is.