Bathtub Poop

On reaching the wrong kind of parenting milestone.

This post originally appeared on Substack.

So here’s a real gross story.

I’d planned on writing about something else entirely for today’s installment, but as I’m sitting here watching Shaquille O’Neal get put through a table in a wrestling match, I thought maybe instead I should tell you about my kid’s latest, greatest accomplishment.

Bathtime is my thing, but we’re just now getting to the point where it’s kind of fun to play around with Benji as he’s in the tub. So sometimes I get distracted; either by my phone or by talking to Erin, I may not always be 100% attentive.

Sue me.

Well, I was answering a question that Erin asked me tonight and turned to look at Benji, who’d gotten very quiet, and I saw him on his hands and knees. This isn’t out of the ordinary. He crawls around in the tub a lot, especially on bubble bath nights.

What was out of the ordinary, however, was the large turd just kind of…hanging out of his butt.

Benji was on his hands and knees trying to poop. Well, actively pooping. In the bathtub.

I immediately screamed, “No, no, no!” in rapid succession and started to panic. I didn’t want it to fall in the water; that would mean bleaching the whole fucking tub and having to fish through poop soup to get it out. As Erin ran in, I did what any sane person would do, or so I thought. I picked up my slippery, wet kid and threw him on the toilet, praying to God and Jesus and anyone else that the poop would stay “attached” to his butt instead of falling to the floor.

I more or less tossed him onto the toilet as Erin came around the corner and looked down to see that I did not, in fact, get Benji on the toilet in time for him to poop in it. He pooped on it. Right in front of the seat cover sat this…gargantuan poop.

“Why didn’t you just grab toilet paper to pull the poop off? Why did you pick him up and put him on the toilet?”

“I don’t know! I panicked!”

“Why are you yelling?” Erin asked.

“I don’t know!”