POTTY TRAINING IS THE NEW SKY DIVING.

Lets be honest we’re not getting any younger. When I was young I was full of energy, vigour, passion and bullshit. These days I’m mostly full of cholesterol and haemorrhoids. But back then I had the get up an go kind of attitude that would propel me to the forefront of society. Of course all of that changed when I left home for university and discovered that the world already has lots of motivated people and why should I get in their way. Much easier to stay in bed and let them get on with it. I lost the will to change the world and gained the will to change my waistline one mixed grill at a time. The man who once looked death in the face and did a bungee jump rapidly became the kind of man who winced when he saw someone ejecting a USB stick without removing it safely.

But theres a side to me you don’t know, and no I’m not talking about my obsession with Zumba. When people see me wheeling my shopping trolley round the frozen vegetable isle on a Saturday morning they have no idea of the white knuckle roller coaster I’m on. You see I have kids, better yet I have a kid who is 99% potty trained. Potty training is a relentless and ancient art form that requires more patience than even a bonsai gardener can muster. The early days are ok, you just always assume that you are never more than four seconds away from being pebble dashed in fecel mater and thus always wear a sowester and galoshes. But once the child gets the hang of their many sphincters you start to let your guard down. Big mistake.

In the early days of potty training you used to travel everywhere with three changes of clothes. One for the child, one for you and one for the passer by who happened to be caught in the scatological crossfire. But as time goes on the accidents become fewer and further between. Whole weeks go by without even so much as a stray fart. And then it happens, that moment you never planned for. The spawn of your loins has evacuated himself all over the shop floor. In hindsight the signs were all there, what you had mistaken for a Aztec rain dance was in fact your child’s attempt to keep his shit together (quite literally).

At this point you have already crossed the Rubicon and must quickly establish a plan of action. A fresh pair of trousers must be found, the logical option would be to steal these off another passing child. However for some reason society seems to frown on this. A sign of the changing times to be sure. The next and most critical point in your plan of action must be to clean up any fecel debris. Depending on where you are, this can often be hidden behind curtains, brushed under rugs or simply blamed on a passing dog. The last and sometimes hardest part is to locate the nearest child friendly toilet. When I say child friendly what I mean is that ideally it should be larger than a dwarfs phone box, not have a red OAP alarm chord in reaching distance and lastly not have magnolia walls. I’m no interior decorator but I do know that there are very few colours on the colour wheel that look better with the addition of brown. Its unlikely you’ll find a place with all three, so a compromise must usually be made.

I’d personally prioritise the OAP alarm, changing the soiled pants of a toddler is much akin to bomb disposal. Neither of these pastimes are made any easier by having a mildly irate man being paid minimum wage banging on the door asking if you’ve had a little tumble.

So next time you meet me halfway down an aisle wheeling my kids around, don’t be surprised if my heart rate is up and my mind isn’t on the job at hand. If I don’t catch your eye while we talk, its probably because I’m eyeing up my surroundings, looking for an exit strategy should the worst happen at any moment. Skydivers have nothing on me, the worst day of their life is over in two minutes. Two months later I’m still finding bits of the worst day of my life under my fingernails.