How My Son Ruined My Favorite Indian Restaurant
Most of the time, if a person gets pooped on, it’s their own fault. In one way or another, whether knowingly or not, they volunteered for it. They either made the terrible choice to recycle their plastic grocery bags to pick up their dog’s poop, and were (unjustifiably) shocked when one day their middle finger slid through an unseen hole in the bottom of the bag and right into a fresh turd, or they applied for a job as a nursing assistant in an old folks’ home where, in case you’re blissfully unaware of the facts, shit abounds.
Or… they had a kid.
Anybody who has a kid forfeits the right to act surprised or horrified when they are shat upon. It’s that unavoidable.
That doesn’t mean getting pooped on isn’t going to totally screw up your day or give you a minor case of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. My once-favorite place to get Indian food (which also happens to be the only Indian restaurant in town) is forever ruined for me because of poop-related PTSD. Every time I drive by there I have paralyzing flashbacks.
The last time we ate there, our son Lucas was almost three, and was already potty-trained. Well… mostly potty-trained. We were at that stage when he’s wearing underwear, but you always keep a diaper handy just in case. We could trust him to warn us if he had to pee, but poop was still sort of touch-and-go. Which was totally fine, because he was one of those kids whose eyes start to water right before he poops. As long as I stayed on high alert we were cool.
Or so I thought.
As our naan bread and creamy I-have-no-idea-what-it’s-called-but-it’s-delicious dipping-sauce appetizer came, I noticed Lucas’ face beginning to turn red. “Lucaaaas,” I said, “do we need to go to the potty?”
His face instantly cleared and he shook his head. “Nope! Don’t have to go poopoo!”
Which of course meant that he had to go poopoo really bad but was holding it in, which he occasionally still did if he was in a new environment. I told my husband, “I’d better put a diaper on him, just to be safe.”
I opened my diaper bag to grab one, and (like we didn’t all see this coming) there weren’t any in there. And let me just insert right here that I had ample foreshadowing of the events that were about to take place. This child who now sat in front of me with watery poop-eyes was the very same child who, mere months before, had stood in the middle of our upstairs hallway after getting out of his bath, and said “I have to poop” and before anybody could bat an eyelash, dropped a giant load right onto our white carpet. Poop washes out super-easy, just so you know, so don’t totally freak out when your kid poos all over your white whatevers. Or better yet just don’t own any white whatevers.
Anyway, the point is, I should have known. I should have never left the house with that child without a full contingency plan in place. I should have had diapers, wipes, a change of clothes, soap and a washcloth. So, like I said at the beginning: totally my fault.
I told Lucas, “We’re going to go potty, just to be sure.”
“I DON’T HAVE TO GO POOPOO!”
“You don’t have to go, but you do have to try.” Such a great line; I’ve used it on my kids forever. It’s perfect for right before leaving on a long road-trip when you ask everyone if they need to use the bathroom one last time, and everyone (including your husband) says, “No, I’m good!” but then five minutes down the road everyone (including your husband) realizes that actually, yeah, they do have to pee after all. Everyone but you, because you’re the only one smart enough to empty your tank even though you don’t feel “the urge.” So that’s why I came up with “you don’t have to go, but you do have to try,” for both kids and husbands. Feel free to steal that, I totally won’t be mad at you.
I took Lucas to the bathroom and plopped him up on the toilet. For ten minutes, his eyes watered like Niagra freaking falls (and I just knew my husband was eating the last of the naan, because he has no self-control when it comes to food), but alas, no poops were pooped. Reluctantly, I returned to our table with Lucas.
Our food hadn’t come yet, but there was one tiny crumb of naan left (“I saved you some!” my husband proudly proclaimed), so we sat and colored with Lucas while we waited. But again, Lucas’ eyes started to water. “Lucas! Are you freaking kidding me right now? DON’T YOU DO IT.” I yanked him out of his seat by his arm-pits and sprinted to the bathroom with him as fast as I could. It was still unoccupied praise Jesus. I ripped off Lucas’ pants and threw him on the toilet, then bent over with my hands on my knees to catch my breath. “You’d better poop, kid,” I told him.
He didn’t. It was just as before; ten minutes of me standing around getting more pissed by the second while he sat there crying all over everything (not actual crying; withholding-of-poo crying). “For God’s sake,” I muttered, and for the second time, we returned to our table. My husband informed me that our food had come right after I’d rushed Lucas to the bathroom, and he had done his best to wait for us, but he was super-hungry and couldn’t help himself. His food was already half-eaten.
I took a deep, cleansing breath. I shouldn’t be getting pissed. Lucas was probably only constipated. And really, if he’s that constipated, I told myself, nothing’s coming out anyway. Which means I can finally eat.
Three delicious, spicy bites in to my curry chicken, I noticed that once again, Lucas’ face was turning red and his eyes were starting to water. You have got to be shitting me right now. And yes, that is exactly what he was doing. He was totally shitting me. He groaned. The tell-tale groan of poop currently exiting his body, the same groan he still does to this day, six years later, and (to the dismay of his future wife) will probably always do.
“NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” My scream filled the restaurant. Like a bad slow-motion sequence in a movie, I lunged over the table for Lucas in an attempt to prevent what I knew deep down had already been done. I was too repulsed and overwhelmed by what was happening – and what I knew was about to happen, considering I was without diapers, extra underwear, pants, socks (a freaking bathtub) – that it was completely beyond my capability to maintain any sort of social decorum or discretion. I tucked Lucas under my arm and ran screaming and crying with him to the bathroom.
How bad is it? Please God let it be contained! I screamed inwardly, while outwardly screaming “OHMYGOD HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!”
It was not contained. It was as if someone had put a water-hose down the back of his underwear, but instead of water coming out of it, it was brownie batter, but instead of brownie batter, it was shit – and the whole thing had completely, catastrophically, exploded. Unbeknownst to me, it had even seeped out onto my forearms (it’s surprisingly difficult to feel poop on you when it’s still body temperature). Every single article of Lucas’ clothing had poop on it. I stripped him naked, crying and blubbering the whole time. What have I done? I thought to myself, referencing not my ill- preparedness, but rather motherhood in general.
After twenty minutes of bathing my poop-smeared child with those crappy brown paper towels and the weird-smelling “kills 99.9% of bacteria” soap while trying to ignore the increasingly angry knocking of other diners who needed to use the restroom, I finally emerged with a more-or-less clean child who was wearing nothing but a t-shirt which, if you looked close enough, had a faint brown stain around the bottom of it. I probably should have thrown out the t-shirt along with the rest of his clothes, but then I would really be walking out of that bathroom with a fully-naked toddler, and that just didn’t feel right, okay???
The best thing my husband did that evening was have the waiter box up our meals for us while I was trying to clean all the shit off our kid in the bathroom. I never did eat that food, though; it reminded me too much of poop. To this day, we still have not returned to that restaurant. At least I learned my lesson about always keeping the diaper-bag stocked with wipes, diapers, and a change of clothes.
Well, at least until we had our next child. She ruined my favorite Greek place.
Kristen Mae is a devoted wife and mother, ADHD momma-warrior, violist, health-nut, and writer. She is the voice of Abandoning Pretense, where her goal is to provide a community where women are free to be honest about their struggles with marriage, parenthood, and life. In addition to her blog, Mae shares hilarious and heart-warming tidbits of her life on her Facebook page, Google+, and Twitter.
