A Word or Two About Little Man Poo

I think a major fear of many fathers is all the shit (and by "shit" I mean actual poop like the kind that comes out of your body) and the changing of diapers. Not many dads know a lot about shit (again, I mean actual poop). If you’re like me, you might have babysat 5 times as a kid, probably making sure your friends had no idea you were actually doing that, and making sure the kids were at least 3 years old, because you weren’t doing any freaking diaper changing. You kind of feared it. So you’ve got no experience at all. But you try to be strong as a father, and you face the fear and you say “yes… I will change my share of the diapers” and you do it and, oh my god, you can’t believe how easy it is! I mean, it barely even smells at all! Particularly if the infant is being breast fed, there’s almost no smell. Some people even say it is “sweet” smelling. Honestly, that kind of comment is for the weirdos, but you will actually hear people say that. And so you conquer the fear of infant poo after some initial experiences with it. And you feel you’ve conquered a real challenge. The fear is gone.

At around 10 months of age, once they start eating real food, the door slams, the guillotine falls, the honeymoon ends. Watch out. Whole new ballgame. The fear was justified! Get out while you can! Some observers have been known to walk past when a 10 month old’s diaper is being changed and noting “ahhh… you’re in the man poo stage, eh?” Based upon the smell, until you get acclimated, you might actually wonder from time-to-time if you just might accidentally have started changing your own father’s diapers. Or question if, maybe, just possibly, a full grown man is shitting into a paper bag and slipping it into the child’s diaper when you aren’t looking (I’m not saying it’s probable, just that it seems plausible).

Of course, everything gets better with time. Do you remember how, at some point by maybe, say, sophomore year in college, puking after you drank excess quantities of alcohol no longer seemed all that awful and wasn’t necessarily show-stopping? Does the phrase “Puke and rally” ring bells with anyone? Or anyone who has done farm work or factory work in a less-than-ideal environment just “gets used to the smell.” Eventually changing the man-poo stage diapers gets to be like that. You might wince at the first one of the day, and after taking a week off it is hard to get back into the swing of things, but you get used to it

But I’ve said nothing about quantity. This is another complete mystery.

When my son was two, I was roughly 12 times the age, approximately twice the height and 7 times his weight. I ate approximately 5 times as many calories as he does. I was 3-5 times as fast as him, and could lift things with a weight approximately 8-10 times as heavy as he can. My clothing takes up at least 4-6 times as much material.

So why are his shits 90% the size of mine?

Are assholes like eyes? After you're born, they are essentially full-size already and grow very little after birth? When he goes into the bathroom, announcing his attention to “take a dunk” (in my daughter’s words), I sometimes ask him not to flush because I want to come in and admire the size. I just look at it and look back at him, and I think “your insides must just be a giant empty space, where all that poo previously was. You must be a hollow shell. I wonder if I took a tank of helium and put it in your ass, could I inflate you? Could I fill up this hollow shell of a boy and make you float around my house? And if I did that, would your farts be the high-pitched squeal of a balloon deflating?”