|
|
|
Crap-dar
by
Beth
Goodtree
How many of you have kids? How many of you used to BE kids? Oh
great! Then you are all familiar with ‘Crap-Dar.’ No?
Sure ya are, you just didn’t have a name for it. It’s like
radar, all kids have it.
This is the way it works: no matter how far away your kids are, as
soon as you go into the bathroom to take a well-deserved dump,
they’re home banging on the door.
Picture it. You’re at the office and you feel the first
twinges, but you hate taking a crap in front of your coworkers.
Flatulating so loudly they can hear you in the next building does
nothing to promote the dignity and respect you try to engender.
Besides, you don’t want your office mates speculating on whether you
make floaters or sinkers. So you assess the situation and decide
you can wait til you get home as long as you take small steps and
stand with your legs squeezed together while waiting for the bus.
You get home and try to do the parent thing first. You look for
your kids to yell at them just so they know whose in charge. But
no kids are around. They left a note saying they were playing a
double-header game of soccer in some town 25 miles away and didn’t
expect to be home before midnight. Therefore, you feel perfectly
safe in spending at least 10 minutes taking a nice, protracted,
eye-watering fecallation. You find your virgin NY Times
crossword puzzle of the day, open your hidden safe and take out the
last pencil with its eraser intact that you’ve hidden for just such
an occasion.
Then you go into the bathroom. You turn on the water from force
of habit. You used to do it when your bathroom was off the
kitchen in that 2-bedroom closet you lived in that the landlord
laughing called an apartment. Since the walls were made out of
plastered-over tissue paper, you’d have to run the water whenever
you relieved yourself so your guests wouldn’t think there was a
horse pissing in the bathroom. Now it has become an almost
Pavlovian thing. You can’t use the bathroom unless the water
is running.
So you turn on the water, check the toilet seat for dog hairs, push
your bottoms around your ankles, and settle yourself comfortably on
the bowl. Just as you’re letting forth with your first
wall-shaking, plaster-cracking pre-dump fart, there is a banging on
the door that makes you jump so high you almost trip over the
pantyhose binding your ankles together.
Crap-dar in action. From 25 miles away, and in the middle
of the championship soccer game of the year, your kids knew you were
gonna take a dump. Instantly they get teleported to the other
side of your bathroom door. On top of which, they heard you cut
loose such a big one it registered on the Richter scale. So much
for parental dignity.
However, I have learned to use Crap-dar to my advantage. Since
my son is now old enough to have a social life, he goes out at night.
Being a typical parent, I worry. If he says he’ll be home by
11, I start getting nervous at 11:01, and am ready to dial 9-11 by
11:02. This is where Crap-dar comes in.
I merely eat lots of broccoli at dinner and start drinking a lot of
hot tea around 9 pm. By the time 11 pm rolls around, I’m ready
to take an emergency crap. And sure enough, as soon as I sit
down and let loose the first ear-shattering fart, my son is banging on
the door. And finally, I can take a crap with peace of mind.
©
Beth
Goodtree - 2003 |
