Big Ugly Man Doll

Absalon, an incense-swinger in the Miller’s Tale from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, is noted to be a man “particularly squeamish of farting.”  If you, dear reader, are particularly squeamish of farting, and worse than farting – much worse – then I beg you to skip this, and move on to the previous post, which is a good bit and has tales from Atlantic City. 

But if you’re up for truly crappy tales about the darker side of parenting, read on. 
If you’re not frightened of things that stink in the dark, read on. 
If you know the difference between shit and Shinola because you’ve stepped in both of them, read on.  For these are…

True Tales Of Doody!

Number One Son asked me last night about poop, specifically, “Daddy, what’s diarrhea?”  I told him a bit about the effects, the consistency, trying to keep things calm and professional.  “OK,” he asked, “what about explosive diarrhea?” 

To heck with calm and professional.  Nothing gets a 10-year-old boy laughing like a measured, reasonable discourse on excrement, calmly told.  “Oh, explosive diarrhea,” I said with my best Mr. Rodgers voice, “you had that once.” 

“I did?”

“Oh yes, in this very room.  This was your nursery when you were born.  I walked in here to change your diaper, alone, not knowing the danger I was faced with.  I set you on the pad, took off your diaper, and lifted your little legs in the air – unwittingly priming a weapon so lethal it’s been outlawed by most of the signatories of the Geneva Convention. 

“Just as soon as your legs were upright, your ass cut loose with the most horrific stream of toxic human sewage I have ever seen – and I saw “Jerry Springer – The Opera” on stage.  In one continuous line, like a laser made of shit, you hosed down the wall, the crib, the lamp, the window, and everything in between.  It was excrement made epic.  It was Ev. Re. Where!”

“What did you do?” he asked, gasping for breath with laughter.

“Son, I did what every young father does in those circumstances.  I froze solid, still holding your legs in midair, and yelled ‘Medic!’ as loud as I could.  Your mother came running up the stairs and asked ‘What’s the mat – OH MY GOD!’  She covered me by covering you, since we didn’t know if we were about to face another butt-barrage from your bottom.  I dove for the wipes and the hazmat suits and started cleaning up.

“And that’s what explosive diarrhea is.  Aren’t you glad you asked?”

And of course he was glad he’d asked; he hasn’t laughed that hard in a while. 

Since we’re already on the topic, it reminded me of the worst shitstorm I’ve ever seen – a tale we retell not to Number One Son but to the Human Tape Recorder.  There have been moments that linger, some that come close – like our beloved Godson as an infant, sitting perfectly still, looking for all the world like a beatific Buddha, as a circle of orange slowly spread around him in all directions on a white carpet.  He looked so damn happy, a perfect Zen moment of poo, as though he was going to enjoy those carrots just as much on their way out as he did on their way in. 

But no, not that image, nor any of my own mis-adventures, nothing can rate as high for a low point than the Epic ShitStorm. 

We had two of our best friends over, a couple our age and their young sons, a baby and a lad a few months older than the Human Tape Recorder.  Since he’s still underage, and to protect the innocent, we’ll call him The Very Busy Boy.  The grownups and babies (Number One Son was an infant) were upstairs, and the toddlers – neither the boy nor the HTR were quite 3-yrs-old yet, as I recall – were downstairs. 

“Daddy,” came the call from the depths, and both Daddies looked at each other.  “We need more wipes.”  Oh no.  This can’t be good. 

They were Big Kids Now, by gum, and just to show us how great and big they were, they had decided to change one another’s diapers. 

Oh. My. God.  There are things no human being should have to see.  My friend T and I were down there for 45 minutes in full hazmat riot gear.  I was in therapy for PTSD – post traumatic shit disorder – for months.  I still can’t have beans, or look at certain Jackson Pollack paintings, without relapsing and screaming for the wipes.  I think T lost his hair overnight.  There was poo in a part of the basement that we hadn’t even known about – we discovered a lost storage room, because they’d managed to get shit there, too.  The kids were both remanded to the tub for a solid scrubbing, since they were covered as well.  They couldn’t quite grasp why we weren’t more excited. 

The worst part was the speed at which a room covered with poo will kill a buzz.  We were working on the second bottle of wine at the time, and it was going to require at least two more just to get through the night. 

So, come now, don’t be shy.  Do you have a True Tale of Doody for us?

Tags: Children // 4 Comments »

So there I was, reading this excellent post about games of chance and winning the lottery over at Good Job Sucking, when I realized:  I know exactly what he means.  Driving home from Chicago one year, young and impressionable, we stopped at a rest stop in Nowhere, which is in between Chicago and Omaha.  There was a casual slot machine in some road-side lunch shack, which must have been a bar in the evenings, back in the 70’s when slot machines still roamed the Great Plains – I understand they’ve been hunted almost to extinction in those parts, outside of well-regulated areas.  Having been given a fist-full (literally, you got to keep what you could hold in one hand) of change as we left Chicago, I asked my folks if I could try it. 

Mom was very cheerful about this chance to provide an object lesson in Why Gambling Is Dumb, and I proceeded to hit a small jackpot with my first quarter – it was probably only around $10 bucks, but it was in quarters and it seemed like A LOT.  Some of them were silver, which just opened my mind to all sorts of gambling vistas. 

Beginner’s luck.  Ain’t it a bitch. 

I got a second shot at being a professional gambler a number of years ago, the first time I went to Atlantic City.  We were there on business, but since we had about 2 hours to kill, we went over to a casino.  No idea which one, it was dark and vaguely Western themed, which I’m tells you everything you need to know.  My friend walked me through How We Play Roulette, and I gave the nice lady my 2 dollars and put them on some number.  She promptly drew that number, handed me something like $75 bucks, and we left for lunch – on me. 

Needless to say, it doesn’t happen like that very often, by which I mean I lost the next time I was in Atlantic City.  Since then, the Human Tape Recorder asked, a few years ago, “Daddy, what’s the lottery?”  I explained very cheerfully that the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math. 

HTR:  “Oh.  But I’m good at math!”   
BUMD:  “Right, so you won’t have to pay that tax.”
HTR:  “But you buy lottery tickets sometimes!”
BUMD:  “Yep.  Daddy was never really too good at math.”

Ah well.  Any stories about beginner’s luck out there?

Tags: Children // 2 Comments »

It’s Friday, and that means answer time! For those of you who have commented with questions from previous ManFAQs, thank you. I’m adding yours to the list of questions women have asked about men over the years, and I will answer them all in turn – to continue to demystify the more malodorous gender for those of the gentler.  Actual questions, posed by real women, and answered by a REAL man. What could go wrong?

Question:  Do men really fake orgasms?

Answer:    No.  Really, no.  Most of us can’t, to start with.  Even for those few who could, possibly, fake an orgasm, they don’t.

Let’s look at why orgasms are faked, outside of a film.  (Inside of a film, it’s too sticky to mention.)  People fake an orgasm to signal, nicely, to their partner that we’re done, show’s over, thank you very much, the end, we’re getting up now because it’s time for lunch, or time to pick up the kids, or I’m tired and some of us have to work in the morning.  But the fireworks come at the end of the scene – if you see fireworks, that’s the end.  Now let’s look at why a guy would do that. 

He wouldn’t. 

Do you know how long it took him to get here?  He’s really not interested in ending this show before the grand finale.  Regardless of how often you do this, in the back of what he’s using for a brain right now there’s a little voice that wonders how long it will be until the encore.  You get no guarantees in Hey Hey land, so once we’re there, we tend to stay as long as we can.  (Mind you, “as long as we can” may only be 2-3 minutes, but still.)

Now you know. Please, feel free to comment with any questions you’d like answered!

Tags: Children // Add Comment »

Do you remember fractions?  You know, seven eighths, two hundred forty-seven three hundred twenty ninths?  A third?  Do you remember what a pain in the butt that was?  No?  Me either.  The joy of having kids is that you get to revisit ALL your childhood, not just the good parts.  Not that the diapers were such a joy, but at least I could speak with some authority.  “That’s poo.”  (I know poo when I see it.) 

Hard to speak with authority when you haven’t done your math homework in 30 years, and what little you remember is all from Tom Lehrer. 

So I don’t really know poo about math, and I certainly don’t remember poo about simplifying fractions.  What I do know is how to talk to everyone in the language they understand.  For me, helping Number One Son with his homework tonight was a question of finding the point at which his interests, his experience, and his problems intersect.  

“Son, you’re not going to simplify these fractions.  The problem is that they’re all too fat.  You’re going to perform Gastric Bypass on these things, and get them as thin as you can!” 

Suddenly it was fun, plus he got the analogy because he’s seen so damn many ER and medical shows that explaining simplifying fractions as surgery made perfect sense to him.  But I’m still humming “You can’t take three from two, two is less than three, so you look at four in the tens place…”

Tags: Children // 1 Comment »

It’s Friday, and that means answer time! For those of you who have commented with questions from previous ManFAQs, thank you. I’m adding yours to the list of questions women have asked about men over the years, and I will answer them all in turn – to continue to demystify the more malodorous gender for those of the gentler.  Actual questions, posed by real women, and answered by a REAL man. What could go wrong?

Question:  Why do men always assume it’s that time of the month?

Answer:   Statistically speaking, he’s got a one in four shot at being right, and since most men will put entire paychecks down on odds worse than that, of course it’s a go-to line.  Second, it gives them the chance to blame something other than ourselves for you being angry – after all, thinks, he couldn’t possibly have done anything to piss you off that badly, right?  If he can rationalize your mood by calling it something else, then he doesn’t have to change his behavior, which would probably involve getting his own beer. 

He could also just be projecting – as we know, we have our own version.

Of course, there’s also that element of flirting with danger – if he assumes it’s that time of the month, and he’s right, and he mentions it, he knows there’s a decent chance you’ll come over there and snap his neck like the weasel he is.  It’s an adrenaline thing, although it’s not usually an inherited trait – a lot of those genes don’t get passed on, if you catch my drift.

Now you know. Please, feel free to comment with any questions you’d like answered!

Tags: Children // 1 Comment »