I’m not joking. If you don’t have small children and bathroom functions are not a constant topic of conversation for you, look away now. I am going to talk about it. Really. Are you still reading? Okay, here goes:

As I looked out back to peek at Amy and Evan jumping on the trampoline, I noticed the goofy dog eating something in the yard. The raccoons haven’t been in our trash lately, so I complained to Doug that Dharma might have raided the neighbor’s trash for a snack. I realized the trampoline was empty and went out front to see what the children were doing. At that moment, Evan trotted up to the house smelling extremely ripe. I asked him if he’d had an accident and he insisted that he hadn’t pooped in his pants. I tried checking, but he repeatedly scooted just out of reach while his voice became increasingly hysterical. “I didn’t do it. No poop in my pants!” Amy became the third person in our odd little musical number with her sing-song voice chanting, “E-van sti-inks. E-van sti-inks.” Eventually, Evan dodged left when he should have dodged right and I caught him. There was definitely some poop gluing his undies to his skin. I took the screaming objector in the house to begin the hazmat procedures.

After a completely disgusting clean-up, Evan recovered from the indignity of it all and happily played with the five thousand toys accompanying him in the bathtub. I started in on my tired, old ‘poop goes in the potty’ routine. Without even looking up from the shark that was eating the pirate duck, Evan repeated his story. “I did NOT poop in my pants.” But then, he added a new detail. “I pooped on the tree.” Now, I admit that we have ignored Evan’s obsession with peeing on trees, because, well, a tree is better than wet undies. Somehow, it never occurred to me that the child who hates sitting on public toilets would try to poop outside. I called Amy in the room to tell me her side of the story.

“Amy, did Evan go poop outside?” “Yes. He was jumping on the trampoline and then he said he had to go potty, so I told him to pee on the tree and he got off the trampoline and he pulled down his pants and then he bended over like this and he pooped on the tree.” At this point in the story, you have to imagine five or ten minutes of stunned silence as I just stood there, slack jawed. Evan doing belly flops that sent actual waves of water across the bathroom floor, shocked me back to reality. The flood was mopped and the clean child chose space monkey pajamas for the evening. I went to report the incident to Doug.

“He did WHAT?” “You heard me. He did that thing a bear does in the woods.” Doug tilted his head to dislodge the image or maybe he was trying to shake a thought free. “Soooo, he did just like the bear in the Charmin commercials.” “Yes! It was exactly like that!” A slow grin spread across Doug’s face that revealed something wicked was about to be said. I tilted my head down and looked at him through my eyebrows, anticipating something wildly inappropriate. He leaned back in the chair and spoke slowly with the grin never leaving his face. “I know what Dharma was eating.”