Potty Mouth Training
Preparing my son for all kinds of sh*t in this world.
“David,” I said to my 12-year-old son one morning. “Imagine you are in Beijing and have constipation. You want to ask a pharmacist for medicine but he doesn’t speak English. Draw a picture to explain your condition.”
I like to surprise my boy at breakfast; make him think while he chomps Cheerios. I believe it helps warm up his mind for sixth grade science.
Besides, he’s used to it, and he knows exactly why I ask such things. We travel a lot and I’ve had some pretty grim digestive-tract experiences overseas. David was with me, blissfully unaware at the time, as I lost control of my bowels in the back of a taxi cab in Abu Dhabi.
Sitting in my own mess, I decided the best course of action was to pretend that everything was fine and dandy. Travelers all over the world find themselves in this same situation every minute of every day. It’s a rite of passage — quite literally if you’re en route somewhere. My good friend Peg experienced this great gut release on a bus in rural Thailand and was stuck in her mess for six hours. I was lucky by comparison, within five minutes of our destination.
When we pulled up at David’s school, I eased myself out of the cab. I told the driver to wait for me.
“Mom, you’re walking funny. Are you okay?” David asked.
“Where is the women’s bathroom?” I answered, calmly.
He pointed, and I teetered into the loo. I couldn’t find the light switch so I sat on the toilet in the dark. I wondered how I would clean myself up. If I opened the stall door to let light in, someone might get a glimpse of me.
Suffice it to say that I was and am very glad Arab restrooms come equipped with a spray nozzle. And since I was wearing trousers under my dress — in an effort to stay covered, per the culture — I was able to dispose of said pants in the trash and still be acceptably covered. There are hidden benefits to adopting cultural norms; only to be discovered by trying them on for size.
I walked out five minutes later as if nothing had happened. My pulse never going above 80 the whole time.
“MOM! WHERE ARE YOUR PANTS?” David screamed. His heart, no doubt, racing.
“I hated them,” I whispered.
Much later, I came clean with David about the incident. Obviously, I emphasized, I’m a master of disguise and he should be, too, wherever he goes. Poop studies, I added, merely prepare us for what happens outside the baño. Will you be ready for all the crazy shit that comes at you — not just out of you?
Cut to our house in Vermont a year later. David is on the seat at the breakfast bar, which makes me think of “stool samples.” And suddenly I recall the two weeks I spent very constipated in Beijing in 1989.
I’d gone to a pharmacy and tried to explain my symptoms — or lack thereof — to no avail. For the life of me, I could not successfully depict poop not coming out.
When my boyfriend at the time expressed an interest in sunscreen for the bald spot on his head, the pharmacist handed over a bottle of Rograine (yeah, the stuff that slows hair loss). We laughed so hard that my intestines relaxed, but his head continued to get burned until we found a hat store.
David didn’t flinch at my request of him to draw a picture of what it’s like to have constipation. His drawing — complete with a squatting, defecating man crossed out with an X — is proof that my parenting strategy is working and that David is getting geared up for the world at large.
