Eartha Kitt

When you have children, talking about bodily functions is a-okay. You can sip your latté and regale your fellow parents about the latest brown nugget your offspring has squeezed out and instead of your coffee buddies spitting java all over their Boden they will nod enthusiastically and then recount a similar tale about their spawn ‘dropping some friends off at the pool,’ ‘releasing a chocolate hostage,’ or ‘pushing out a panama.’

You get so familiar with dealing with all manner of viscous fluids that you become immune to them and don’t bat an eyelid at scraping vomit off the floor or scooping a floater out of the bath. It comes with the territory – and besides it’s way, way too late to get squeamish. So it comes as a bit of a shock when you hit some kind of hidden terminator line and you suddenly cannot talk about poo anymore – it’s just not done.

My son (as he is five) has a totally open door (literally) policy when it comes to pooing. He will describe in intimate detail how it’s progressing, how long the ETA is and whether the wiping is something he can handle himself or if he needs to call in professional help. He has no embarrassment about it at all, and so he shouldn’t. We have a book called Everybody Poos by Tara Gomi, which the kids love, and it’s all about pooing and reducing the stigma associated with it – maybe multiple readings of it have made my kids comfortable with it, who knows? It’s a great picture book, and I recommend it.

Well, I feel a list coming on. In the spirit of openness here is a quickscan classification the next time you ‘lay a chocolate egg‘:

    The Turtle You are prepared, psyched for it and then you have a turtle. It pops it’s head out, but the rest is not forthcoming and then you have a dilemma. Do you: A: Play the waiting game? B: Suck it back in and try again later or C: Just accept that you’re going to use a lot of toilet paper? I say B and get some coffee and exercise – guaranteed result.
    The Machine Gun Kelly For a few moments you worry it may be a turtle…or an Epic but then, like Machine Gun Kelly you pepper the water like you are trying to finish off a submerged gangster. Yes, you have turned into a gangster rabbit…or a deer.
    The Epic You know you have to start tinkering with your diet when you produce an Epic or two – it takes so long you have to take reading material. The worst is if you undertake an Epic in a public loo or at a friend’s house as the former will result in an x-factoresque queue half a mile long and the latter will make people worry you’ve done an Elvis.
    The Chocolate Milkshake Normally an indicator of ill health, a dodgy kebab or muchos muchos beer, The Chocolate Milkshake strikes fear into the hearts of grown men, children and toilet ducks. I had dysyntry in India once and I had to spend about a day, full time, on the toilet. That is my least entertaining travel story, ever. FACT.
    The Piping What you really need for a Piping is some kind of gallery music as you’re like the Jane Asher of poo – normally messy and frequently a WMD.
    The Paintballer Starts off as a Piping and then a couple of sneaky farts come out and before you know it you’re decorating the inside of your lav like a weekend warrior. Normally a WMD with a fearsome cleanup afterwards.
    The You Can’t Handle the Truth You have a stack of reading material (you know you’ve written a light book when it is considered acceptable reading material in the loo), a block of uninterrupted time and the mental preparedness to take on an Epic…but no, it’s too big! Like squeezing out a bowling ball a YCHTT leaves you mentally scarred and slightly sweaty.

    The Immaculate Conception Like launching a Royal Yacht, sometimes they just slip into the water without any fuss or fanfare and you sometimes have to check that it really happened – but it’s disappeared down the U-bend like a diving salmon…but you wipe anyway, even though you know you don’t need to.
    The WMD The strategies of dealing with a particularly smelly poo differ between the sexes. Men tend to wave their hand in front of their face and say: ‘I’d give it a minute…’ and women will whip out a bottle of perfume or deodorant that they have secreted on their person and attempt to disguise it – which results is a mad mixture which is somehow worse, Eau De Poo if you like.

I reckon I am going to some interesting comments after posting this – oh well, bring ‘em on!

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