Not too long ago, J and the kids met me at a hamburger place for lunch. I love it when they meet me for lunch. It gives me a nice break in the middle of the day, and I get to eat something other than Lean Cuisine. This time, the kids were in fine spirits and we were having a really good time.<\/p>\n
About halfway through the meal, however, things took a turn for the worse. C stood up on his seat and said “Uh-oh! I’m going to go poopy!”<\/p>\n
When you’re a dad there’s really only one reaction to this: I grabbed him and ran off to the bathroom, carrying him in one arm and using the other to navigate through doors and people and so forth.<\/p>\n
What I didn’t do was grab the bag of baby supplies (wipes, diapers, etc.). Rookie mistake, that I’m fairly sure I’ll never make again.<\/p>\n
In any case, the bathroom was empty when we arrived. I rushed into a stall, pulled C’s pants down and sat him on the toilet. We made it with no accidents. We high fived, and then he got down to business.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, this particular business was very difficult. He pushed and pushed and grunted and strained.<\/p>\n
“Ohhhh… It’s hard!” <\/p>\n
I tried to be reassuring, saying things like “You’re doing fine” and “just relax”, but he was really working hard and I’ll admit that I was a bit worried.<\/p>\n
“No…it’s hard to do it!” His face was red from the strain. “I’m trying to squeeze the poopie out!”<\/p>\n
“It’s okay,” I said. “Just keep going. You’re doing fine.”<\/p>\n
He continued pushing and groaning for several minutes and then he looked hopefully up at me. “Help me, daddy?”<\/p>\n
Uh oh, now we’re really in scary territory.<\/p>\n
“Uh.. I can’t. This is something you have to do yourself.” I peeked behind him, and he was in the process of producing the biggest log I’d ever seen. I tried to look reassuring. “You can do it.”<\/p>\n
He pushed a bit more and then “please, daddy? please? you can help me? It’s so hard to do!”<\/p>\n
“I’d like to, but there’s nothing I can – “<\/p>\n
“Please, daddy! Please!”<\/p>\n
There I was, standing in a grungy bathroom stall with no supplies, no cell phone, and no way of getting help. My three year old was in trouble and practically wailing for me to pull a humongous poo out of his backside.<\/p>\n
What would you do?<\/p>\n
Think carefully, because that’s where I’m leaving you in this scary tale: no hope of rescue, no way out. Just you and the poo.<\/p>\n
Happy Halloween!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Not too long ago, J and the kids met me at a hamburger place for lunch. I love it when they meet me for lunch. It gives me a nice break in the middle of the day, and I get to eat something other than Lean Cuisine. This time, the kids were in fine spirits […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[118,120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-embarassing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-1t","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}