Welcome to the Potty!
Observations from the poop deck
Most of our lives, going to the bathroom is a rather uneventful affair. In public, we cordially excuse ourselves, quietly do our business while avoiding all eye contact, and return to standard human activities. For those between the ages of born to tween, things get far more interesting. I have quite a few awkward memories of answering nature’s call while a snoring baby was affixed to my chest via the classic Baby Björn or dealing with those plastic petri dish flaps they call “changing tables.”
It wasn’t until potty training started in earnest, though, that I realized what adventure the ones and twos can really be. At home, you can toss out the rule book—you’re in a safe space, your controlled sanctuary free from judgmental Karens and scary superficial stalls more appropriate for horses than humans. In the real world, there are just too many uncontrolled variables.
For me, it’s the far-too-loud social commentary and the endless touching of every single bathroom surface. My girls are fascinated by the bathroom as they enter, seemingly enthralled with an excretory museum than a public restroom. They “ooh” and “ahh” at the endless row of sinks and urinals (in what they now call “Daddy Potties,” which is actually perfect). They ask me to read every warning label or cautionary sign mandated by the Food & Health Department. They analyze or try to strike up conversations with other bathroom attendees, breaking the cardinal law of modern man. I can’t usher them into the farthest and biggest stall fast enough, where I lock the janky handle to ensure some kind of walled enclosure for these play-by-play pottyers.
It’s there that the girls seem to challenge themselves to grab and examine every accessory imaginable. The door lock, the toilet seat, the oversized toilet paper holder, the assistive bar attached to the stall, the soap dispenser, the trash can, the paper towel automator. Nothing is off limits and this might as well be the Chuck E. Cheese ballpit. I implore them to focus, as they try to describe the surrounding smell and the lack of wall decor in this dull space. Our quick trip to the bathroom has become an overextended Architectural Digest article on the finer points of the loo. “Look at me, dad!,” each shouts as they position themselves under the hand dryer, pretending to be on the bow of the Titanic.
We’re closing in on twenty minutes for this charade, and I’m slowly losing hope and sanity. I finally perch each on the toilet where they proceed to ask me more convoluted existential questions. “Why do we go to the bathroom? What is space made out of? Why are you and mommy tired all the time?” But it’s also there that they provide the most dispiriting comment of all.
“Dad, I don’t have to go to the bathroom anymore.”
Between the expletives and the crying, I quickly wash their hands for the seventh time and hurry them out of this cursed space. All that. For nothing. I wish they still rocked the Pampers, a dash-and-ditch alternative I almost miss from my earlier dad days. “How was it?,” my wife asks as we return from our failed quest. “Awesome,” I lie. It’s a microcosm that sums up so much of parenthood—a lot of time, a lot of effort, not much to show for it.
“Dad?,” my oldest says as she grabs my hand. “I need to go potty.”
Mom, it’s your turn.