The Wife & I Discuss the Off Road Commode

Yesterday I happened upon this absolutely stellar, award-winning, high-class commercial in the Interweb Machine Thingy.

Doing what my wife hates the most, I immediately say, “honey, seriously, come watch this...”

As a side note, that is by far the worst phrase you could ever utter to my wife. She HATES when I ask her to watch videos. But then, nine times out of ten, she laughs her ass off. I know at the end of the day she’s writing in her diary: “…and then my sexy-ass husband showed me the most hilarious video and I almost peed myself watching it. God I love that man!”

Actually, it went a little bit more like this:

Wife: I don’t understand. You shit right behind your truck?

Me: Ummm…well yeah, I guess so.

Wife: That’s just stupid. Then it’s right next to your truck. And worse, it’s at the tailgate. What if you bag a deer? Then you’ll be stepping in your own shit while trying to put the deer carcass in your truck bed.

Me: Did you just say “tailgate,” “deer carcass” and “truck bed” to me? I want you so bad right now it’s ridiculous.

Wife: You’re a douche. Seriously, that is the dumbest damn thing I’ve ever seen.

Me: Maybe he dug a ditch, shat in it, covered it back up, and went back to ruthlessly killing innocent deer which he justifies by saying they’re overpopulated, which they really aren’t we’re just encroaching on their damn habitat.

Wife: Here we go again. Blah blah blah…nature…blah blah….save the animals…blah blah… Can you at least go pour me a bit more wine while you’re talking?

Me: Look, I was just trying to show you a funny-ass commercial that’s trying to pass off a trailer hitch toilet seat as a luxury item to rednecks that enjoy killing shit.

Wife: It’s hilarious. Can I leave now?

Me: I’m going to buy one for you for your birthday and make love to you on it.

Wife: OK, first, that’s just dumb. Second, you don’t have a trailer hitch. And third, if you did, you’d have to ask me how to hook the toilet seat up to it.

Me: That’s why I’m buying it for you and not me!!

Wife: That actually might be kinda sexy.

Me: Oh my God – are you serious? Cause I’ll order it right now. Actually, I’ll get on Craigslist and see if anyone close-by is selling them so I can pick it up now. Oh, and I need to buy a trailer hitch and find someone to weld it on…

I paused and realized while I was off on this wild goose chase, my wife had relocated her sexy-ass to the couch where she was drinking her wine and watching her show in peace.

It didn’t matter though, I’m still buying it…

And Now the News, 7-Year-Old Style

The wifey and I make the comment all the time, “the biggest issues in the kids’ lives seem so trivial.”

We think back to our childhood and immediately remember how we believed our lives would end if we didn’t get those blue bicycle wheels. Or those red Converse. Or if Sandy didn’t check that “yes” box on the note I passed to her.

The result of this pondering? What if my kids had a 24-hour, live CNN-style news channel.

I’m assuming it would go a lot like this:

Music: Da da da da, duuuuuuu da da da……

“And now, your anchor, Grayson:”

Grayson: Good evening and welcome to, My Life Is Freakin’ Hard!

Topping tonight is elementary school news. Today, Timothy threw up in front of Sarah. Sarah immediately threw up on Jamal and Fred stepped in it three minutes later.

Art class is canceled this week and we’ll be spending that time reading books with Ms. Woodsworth who smells like daddy when he comes home from the bar.

At lunch, Bobby traded Shay chips for her fruit bar, but sources say Kyle saw Bobby lick some of the chips before the trade was complete.

Our gym teacher Mr. Tobockle didn’t flush the toilet after making a number 2 today, and apparently half the gym class saw it. Mr. Tobockle offered no comment regarding the incident.

This just in, Macy is in her lunch room with a live report. Let’s go to Macy.

Macy what’s the situation there.

Macy: Well Grayson it’s nothing shy of absolute horror. Susie just tried to open her juice box and it exploded all over her. While teachers were trying to calm her, Walker got up and fed our classroom turtle a Twix. Brandon has asked to go to the bathroom a record 13 times and we’ve only been in pre-school 86 minutes so far today. Grayson…we’re all hoping it doesn’t get any worse than this.

Back to you.

Grayson: Horrible…just horrible.

In home news, I peed myself just a tiny bit earlier this morning because daddy was pooping while I was jumping up and down outside the bathroom door begging daddy to please let me pee. I later changed into Spiderman underwear.

An outbreak of parents asking children to do unheard things such as cleaning their messes, making their beds, and brushing their teeth has taken over the mid-west. Officials suggest that children whine excessively, throw things, and make life unnecessarily hard for their parents until the outbreak subsides.

After the break, an exclusive interview with Jed, the seven-year-old boy in my class who eats his own boogers and never whips after he poops.

The Boy & His Poop

Two days and counting. That’s how long it’s been since the boy has pooped.

Yes, I’m going to blab about poop and my son. Before kids, it’s an unspoken topic. Well, that is unless you’re in a dorm room drinking and passing around stories that start with “dude, this one time…”

But then when you have kids…it seems so common to walk up to two parents at the playground after school lets out and hear:

“and so he’s taking this massive poop and it’s blue! And so I freak, right? I mean, the boy’s poop is blue! But then I remember…we ate cotton-candy flavored ice cream last night and it totally makes sense that his poop was dyed Smurf.”

My boy has done nothing but poop pellets for a couple days now. And the complaints that his stomach aches are running rampant. And he’s got all the bad genes I could have possibly passed along…the most notorious being the “worry/obsessive gene.” So if he’s home, he’s sitting on the toilet. And afterwards we get the detailed blow by blow.

He comes creeping down, looking over his shoulder to see where his sister is while pulling us into a secluded corner. In the almost most perfect drug dealer talk he keeps checking over his shoulders while engaging the wife and I in a dialogue about the size and girth of the mini-poop he just unleashed.

Then he quickly ends it with, “and I left it for you to go look at.”

 “That’s awesome Grayson. Umm… how about you start flushing the toilet since you’re giving us such accurate detailed descriptions of your mini creations,” I quickly tell him.

Yesterday we called the doctor who said we should buy glycerin suppositories, slide them in, tell him to fight the urge to poop till he can’t hold it anymore, then let it ride.

SUPPOSITORIES!!

I laughed at the wife when she uttered that sphincter-tightening word.

After she calmly explained I was never to laugh at her again I headed to the store. Standing in the “laxative” isle looking for these damn suppositories was the equivalent of being announced over the loud speaker “customer in the blue hat can’t drop a deuce and I’m gonna assume it’s because he’s got a Star Wars figure or hairbrush stuck up there.”

Along with my purchase I acquired “Rubber Finger Protectors” which according to the package “are ideal for inserting suppositories, applying hemorrhoidal cream and medication to open wounds.”

None of which I had any desire, what-so-ever to do. That’s when I laid the smack-down.

“I refuse,” I told the wife.

The boy roughly said the same thing to the idea.

Apple juice, 1 ton of raisins ingested, and a whole lot of poop coercing of the boy and he finally gave birth to a healthy, happy turd named “Colon Blow.”

Yes he still obsesses about his poops and I’m sure he will be for some time. It’s in the family genes. In fact, I’d be shocked if he ever pooped regularly again.

But I guess what I’ve learned from this experience is…hell, I don’t know what I learned from this experience. I’m just glad the boy finally pooped and I'm pretty confident this blog post will be found through some very disgusting Google search words.

Scared Shitless

So the boy won tickets to the Chicago Wolves hockey team game this past Saturday for raising the most money in his elementary school

for Jump Rope for Heart. We were stoked because we’d been wanting to take the kids to a hockey game for a while.

So Saturday comes and we’re on our way…the wife, daughter, boy and me. We grab a bite to eat, hit the arena, find our seats, and the kids are pumped! The wife hooks them up with a bag of cotton candy while I go and wrestle-us down a couple of beers.

Then, the lights drop down, the spot-lights roam around the ice, the announcer and his douchey announcer voice blast over the speakers and then…the fireworks begin.

During this extremely rookie introduction I look over and my daughter is literally shaking, crying and sitting in my wife’s lap trying her best to climb inside her coat pocket.

I look at the boy and he’s in a crouched position on his chair, wide-eyed, hands in his mouth, and it’s like I can watch the fear slowly grab him by the balls.

When it’s all done I turn trying to act all cool and I say, “that was awesome huh?!”

“Daddy, I have to poop.”

“What?! You…all right…let’s do this.”

So I take the boy to poop in the piss-covered public restroom--every dad’s worst nightmare. Standing in a men’s room, during a manly-man hockey game, leaned-up against a stall door, I try not to make eye-contact with the legions of dudes standing in line drinking beer, spitting, cussing, and waiting their turn at the urinal.

So I stand there, on my Blackberry, staring at the back of the stall door and listening to my boy squat a grumpy like a champ.

Ten minutes later we’re on our way back to our seats. Fifteen minutes later the Wolves score and what happens?! Yeah, fireworks go off. I immediately look at the boy and he’s in his crouching tiger position again. Literally five minutes later they score again…more fireworks. And the boy…all I smell is poop and see the look of fear on his face.

“Dude, you OK?”

“Daddy, my tummy hurts. Are there going to be anymore fireworks?”

“You dropped a third leg in the toilet less than a half-hour ago. You feeling OK chief?”

“I don’t like the fireworks daddy.”

At the end of the night, we drove home, boy crying his head off…”daddy, I was so excited when I won this prize because I knew you’d love to go see a live hockey game and I wanted to see it with you. I’m so sorry daddy!!” My heart broke for the little guy and I immediately felt the weight of the world on me.

I love this little bastard. He’s such a damn good kid. I won’t lie, the weight I bear from his idolization is unmerciful at times. It bites me in the ass when I least expect it and forces me to remember I’m his father and not his best friend. But I won’t lie, it’s every father’s dream.

So, for now, I just continually tell myself the same five words which the talented and skilled Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny made so famous, “just don’t fuck it up!”

Evolution of a Peaceful Poop

Oh how I used to love the man-throne. I loved the comfort of slamming my pants down to the ground, situating my overly white-ass on the porcelain and just knowing for the next 10 minutes (give or take an hour) I was gonna be free of any/all responsibilities, chores, conversations…you name it.

When I was a teenager I was a huge fanatic of dipping (yeah, the sexy tobacco habit where you tuck some Copenhagen awesomeness in your lower lip) and of Mario on Game Boy. I’d sit in the bathroom for close to an hour, dipping and playing Mario.

Oh…I definitely didn’t have to poop…I was just camped out avoiding reality and enjoying every damn minute.

Then came college where the toilet was the only place you had enough time to knock out a solo masturbatory quickie. You sure as hell couldn’t do it with the roommate in the room. Showers were a free-for-all for pranks. If you made it through an entire shower without getting cold water dumped on you, attacked by garbage, or your hot water being cut off…well you were the man. Obviously the showers were no place to try and “take care of business.”

So the shitter became the go-to place to knock one out.

Then you get married…and there’s the first few awkward times where you know you’re about to peel some paint off the walls with colon fumes, but you just can’t do it while the new lady-friend was in the house.

The wifey never had that problem. I remember one of the first nights we first lived together I was walking towards the bathroom to pee and there she was, door open, perched on her throne, reading a magazine, relaxed as hell, and all “I’ll be done in a few more minutes. Can you wait?” like it was nothing. A part of me died that day.

Then we had kids. And I swore, I’d never share a bathroom with my kids. And for a while I didn’t have to…till we moved to the urban life that is Chi-Town. Three bedroom house, one bathroom…and that one bathroom has no lock on the door.

It’s inevitable—whenever I need to do my business, a small, embedded microchip goes off in the kids’ brains and bladders and says “hey little bastards listen…I know you’re all watching SpongeBob and having a good time and stuff, but your dad’s on the shitter. We’re moving into Code Brown mode now kids…get up, go pound that bathroom door like you mean it and make your old man cry!”

I’ll stand at the top of the stairs, “anyone need to use the bathroom.”

“Nope – I’m good dad,” the boy will scream.

“Nnnnooooo!!!,” the daughter will echo.

Two minutes later…at least one of them is doing the “pee pee dance” outside the bathroom door explaining how they’re about to pee themselves and everything within a 10 foot radius.

By the time I’m able to enjoy the solitude of the porcelain gods again I’m pretty damn confident it still won’t be on my own. It’ll be my wife having to lift me, place me on the toilet, then stand their disgustedly tapping her foot and asking “are you done yet?”

And I’ll do my doody duty and remember back to when I was a young buck and hearing her mutter the words “are you done yet?” was for an entirely different reason.