"This Memory Stinks"

THIS MEMORY STINKS

For eight years, until I retired from the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, I told this story to my students, making many of them queasy in the process. Now I offer it to a more general audience:

On Wednesday, June 28, 2000, at approximately 1 p.m., I picked up my children at Ridgeway Preschool, where they’d just finished another day of a summer-fun session set up by Susan Larned, the school’s owner and main instructor. Olivia, at age six, was actually too old for the program, but she was eager (like Kelty, who would turn five in mid-August, and just loved Mrs. Larned) to go and play with some other kids, to make some art, to work with plants in the preschool greenhouse, et cetera. The day was partly sunny, with just a hint of a breeze, and the air was warm by Alaska standards. I had to run an errand in Kenai, and the kids were hungry, so we worked out a compromise: If they followed directions and behaved appropriately while I ran my errands, we’d stop at Burger King (which had a playland for kids) and grab a bite to eat. All in all, this describes the makings of a pretty ordinary afternoon.

And it stayed that way … for a while.

I ran my errand, the kids were good, and we soon found ourselves in the Burger King, where I made my children wait with me in line until I’d confirmed their orders. Then I sent them to the playland section while I ordered my own food and wrote out my check. While the kids played, I gathered up the cups I’d been given and ambled over to the serve-yourself drink station to dispense our liquid refreshments. A couple minutes later, I was shuffling to the playland area at the back of the restaurant when Kelty came racing past me. “Gotta go potty?” I astutely asked. “Gotta poop,” he confirmed without stopping. He zipped on through the restaurant and whisked himself through the door of the men’s restroom. I placed our drinks on a table near the tubes and nets and ladders comprising the playland equipment, where Olivia was still busily and obliviously scrambling, and then I headed back out into the main part of the restaurant to wait for my order number (#44) to be called.

Suddenly Kelty was back, shuffling sheepishly from the bathroom and stopping directly in front of me. Suspicious, I asked, “Done already? Did you wipe? Did you wash your hands?”

“Daddy,” he said, “I pooped in my pants.”

Just then, my order was called.

Almost immediately afterward, Olivia strolled out from playland to see what Kelty and I were talking about.

I ignored Olivia. I turned to Kelty. “Very much?” I asked. He nodded sorrowfully. “A lot,” he confirmed.

“Let me look,” I said.

He was wearing a long white t-shirt and summer shorts with Batman underpants underneath. I lifted his t-shirt and started to pull out the waistband of his shorts when I noticed with some trace of horror a soft brown, egg-sized turd stuck to the top of the waistband, sort of teetering there like a gooey boulder in Feces National Park.

“Number 44, your order is ready!” a worker called again.

“Oh, gross!” said Olivia.

I went into action: I made Kelty hold up his t-shirt but stand so that no one else could see his “surprise.” I told him to stand perfectly still. I told Olivia to calm down, and walked up to grab our food. I put our food on our table and told Olivia to sit and eat by herself (and play with her Kid’s Pack prizes) until I returned from the bathroom with her brother. Then I hurried back to Kelty and scurried gently with him back to the men’s room and into the only (and, thank God, unoccupied) stall, where I found another soft brown, egg-sized turd on the tiled floor, about two feet away from the toilet.

Now it needs to be said at this point that I have an excellent and active gag reflex, and it began to kick into high gear when I bent down with a handful of toilet paper to scoop up the turd from the floor and then the one from Kelty’s waistband. Both turds were barely more substantial than whipped cream, and it was a scientific wonder that they held together at all….

Next, I helped Kelty drop his shorts down to his ankles and his underpants down to his knees, and I was gagging a bit, and trying semi-successfully to say encouraging things to him because I didn’t want this to be for him any more traumatic than it already was. “Don’t worry, buddy. It’s gonna be okay…. (cough, cough) Man, that’s a lot of poop. Are you feeling okay? Does your tummy hurt?” (He said it didn’t.) “It’s gonna be all right…. Hey, can you bend over a little more? You’ve got some down your leg…. There, that’s better. I wish this bathroom had some paper towels.” (It had an air-blower for drying hands.) “We’re sure using a lot of toilet paper. Good thing there’s a lot here…. Hey, good job of coming out and telling Daddy you needed help. You’re being a big boy about this…. Wow, that’s a lot of poop in your underwear. I don’t think I can get all of that (cough, cough)…. Okay, bend over some more. I’ve gotta get as much as I can out of your crack, buddy.” (It was packed in there so brown and tight that it appeared like mortar in need of excavation.)

Then finally Kelty himself had something to say: “Dad?”

“Yes?”

“This sucks!”

Bent over him, examining his butt cheeks, I began to laugh, not only because what he said was so true, but also because I’d never heard him use that phrase before, and it sounded funny coming from him.

“You know what, Kelt,” I said, “you’re right. This DOES suck. That’s usually not a very nice thing to say, but THIS time you’re right.”

I got him cleaned up enough (including a thorough scrubbing of our hands) so that he could go eat and play, and when we returned home his mother helped him out of his poopy clothes and into the shower.

And a perfectly ordinary afternoon became an event that I may never forget.