For years, they shit their pants as they strain and their faces burn bright red. They grunt like cavemen in random isolated corners throughout the house. They hide behind chairs while watching weird YouTube videos on the family iPad, all the while demanding that no one even look in their general vicinity as they handle their backdoor business. Not only does their poop routine rule the roost but, to add insult to injury, someone else wipes their ass afterwards. Multiple times. Every single day.
However, after consuming three giant mugs of nuclear-strength coffee mixed with my old faithful Nestlé Naturals hazelnut creamer after a very long sleepless night spent comforting a congested baby boy, do you think the favor is returned? Do you think they give me even a single minute to handle my own digestive mass exodus in peace so I don’t have to strain, risking the chance of acquiring yet another hemorrhoid which, ironically, I only began suffering from as a result of pushing their tiny newborn bodies out of my own as if I were taking the most cathartic shit of my entire life?
Spoiler: No. Because of course they don’t leave me alone to poop in peace because they’re turds (pun not intended) and, as it would appear, they enjoy watching me sweat.
To make matters worse, the humidity has caused the door frame of our downstairs powder bath to swell which prevents the door from latching which then means that locking the door is also out of the question. Conveniently, this allows my children to stand at the door, uncomfortably staring at my bare ass, conveying to me all of the most important things that surely can not wait another four minutes to be shared. And, before you ask, yes, we do have another bathroom. But, it’s upstairs and, as I’m sure you’ve experienced a time or two before, when you gotta go, sometimes you just gotta go and making it up a full flight of stairs to the other bathroom with the working latch and lockable door handle is simply out of the question.
And so I deal with my kids reaching through the crack in the door like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, only they aren’t trying to murder me. They’re only begging for cheddar bunnies and asking to see my poop when I’m done.
Moral of the story: not all heroes wear capes.
Some heroes, as it turns out, are the moms pooping at warp speed while begging their toddler to wait another thirty flippin’ seconds for the snack said toddler is convinced she’ll starve without eating that very moment even though she just finished her breakfast twelve minutes prior. Sometimes, heroes have hemorrhoids and their super power is the ability to wipe more tiny asses by lunch time than you’ve wiped in a lifetime.
Happy pooping, fellow heroes. Here’s to privacy, Preparation-H, and lockable bathroom doors.