I Aint Going In and It Aint Coming Out!

Bounce…bounce……….plop. What started as a normal Daddy-Micah bathroom run at the nice open-air restaurant had turned out to be nothing short of a crisis in the little 2-year-old mind. “When all of a sudden there arose such a clatter (that is, from within the bathroom), Andrea and Grace sprung up to see what was the matter.” Micah emerged with full tears streaking down his face “Mommy, mommy, my…my…my shoe!” She looked down to see his right foot naked against the packed dirt. “Where is your shoe?” she asked, calm as usual. “It fell down the poop hole!” Micah exclaimed with amazing clarity before resuming his tear-filled wail.

Sure enough, he told the truth, we both saw it go bounce…bounce……..plop and if Micah had just a bit more critical thinking skills, he would have easily determined that it was entirely my fault. You see, Micah and I went in search of the bathroom together, finding a nice porcelain john in a small room behind the building. Just as we were headed toward it, the owner of the restaurant called out to us, “For the child? Go to the other one! It is better for the child.” He pointed at one of his workers, sending him with us to make sure we found it ok. Down a long row of doors, we were led to the last room, in which we found your typical “squatty potty.” Mind you, it was a rather clean one, but a squatty potty nonetheless. I would never have chosen a squatty potty for taking Micah to the bathroom (#2), but with the personal escort, I couldn’t very well refuse. And so we decided to make it work.

This is not the exact squatty potty in question, but of similar style.

 Now the perches on this particular potty were quite far apart so I knew right away that Micah could not have his feet on them with his pants at his ankles. The pants needed to come off. You’ve likely been there before in some grimy public bathroom – you take off one shoe, balance on one foot while carefully removing that pant leg only to land that foot back into the shoe. Yea, well, add the components of a two-year-old and a full-sized father squeezed into a closet-sized room, none of whose surfaces would have ever seen a can of Lysol. But anyway, Micah and I worked together and we managed to get his pants off and his shoes back on with relative success. Next, Micah did his business and he did it well, that is with me supporting half his weight as he leaned back over the hole.

With everything cleaned up, we were left with the final challenge of putting the pants back on. Hindsight is always 20/20, but I wish that we had come out of that filthy “closet” for part two of the balancing act. After all, it wouldn’t be anything that hadn’t already been revealed. You see, it wasn’t quite thirty minutes earlier that Micah had dropped his pants to his ankles, held his shirt up to his neck and “watered” the grass – yes, FACING toward all the customers who were enjoying their meals in the nice open courtyard. Now, the public donning of trousers would simply be seen as act 2 in this afternoon’s dinner theatre. But I didn’t think about it at the time. Instead, I took Micah and sat him down on my lap. I popped the first shoe off and it bounced off into the corner. I wasn’t about the touch the bottom of those shoes so as to remove them carefully. No way, I know where they had been standing! I popped the second shoe off and the world suddenly went into slow motion! Bounce…bounce…….plop.

 

We were silent and still for a few seconds, both having seen what had happened. Finally, Micah taunted me with his obvious question, “Daddy, where's my shoe?” “It went down the hole.” I replied calmly. His reply, “I want it to come out!” was met with blunt realism, “It is not going to come out!” And that is where the wailing began.

Daddy, where's my other red shoe?

Micah loved those shoes and we loved them too as shoes he could slip on by himself, and yet they held secure enough for him to run in. Not to mention Lightning McQueen on the front! I looked down the hole with a weak flashlight but saw nothing. I’m not sure how deep the hole was, and I wasn’t about the stick my hand down there to blindly feel around. This father’s love has some limits! Much of the ride home and the rest of the evening was spent fielding question about the whereabouts of his shoe. And still now, one week later, if you ask him, he’ll probably tell you, “My other red shoe fell down the poop hole, but I want it to come out!” As for me, I am perfectly happy leaving it right where it is.