Tales of Turds

 As a parent, especially a new parent, you spend a great deal of time talking about poo.
This ranges from the overly descriptive size and colour comparisons between the parents of newborns, to the hilarious and horrifying tales of the dreaded 'number three'.

 We recently hit a milestone with Master 4 and Miss 3 - both toilet trained for day and night, and completely nappy free! Hooray! I am treasuring this time, knowing all to well that upon the arrival of baby son, 70% of my time will be allocated to poo-related duties.

 I think every parent has at least one or two funny stories about their experiences with the bodily functions of their children. Whether its coming from one end or the other, you can normally always get a new mum or dad (preferably on their 3rd glass of wine at a dinner party) recounting the time when their little ones bowels or barf made a situation quite awkward.

 I will take the time now to tell my story. I have enjoyed telling this story many times, mainly because I think I can make up for how utterly mortified and embarrassed I was by making people laugh.
Because it honest to God was the most humiliating moment of my life.
Which of course means it makes excellent comic material.

 This story occurs roughly a year ago, when my son was out of nappies but my daughter was not.
It was a revoltingly hot day and I wanted to take them swimming. However, since I have the kind of the complexion that causes me to burn anytime I open the fridge, I opted for our local indoor pool.
I loaded the kids onto the bus (as I was car-less at this time), and made the short journey to the pool complex.
Once arriving at the change rooms, I discovered my daughter had done yet another giant poo in her nappy - which made it the 6th for the day - for Christ's sake, I had just changed her 30 minutes ago before we left!
I cleaned her up, then had the realization that I had left the swimmer nappies at home.
This caused me to make the catastrophic decision to just slip her into the bather bottoms, and not worry about it. I mean she obviously cant have any poo left, there simply could not be room in her tiny body!

...Figured out where this is heading yet?

 For roughly 20 minutes everything was fine. We splashed about in the toddlers pool, and we had it all to ourselves. The next oldest kids after mine had to be about 10, and so they were all in the other, deeper pools. I thought it was fantastic.

 It was then that I noticed the suspicious brown canoe floating past my elbow.
I look at my daughter, and her face has broken into a massive grin. 'It's ok' I assure myself.
I went straight into damage control, and taking a child under each arm, I rushed to the nearby shower block. Instead of going to the toilets, I made the choice to rush into a shower cubical. I thought I would just wash my daughter off, wash off her bather bottoms, then sneakily make for one of the deeper pools and pretend like nothing happened. Mature, I know.
I turned the shower on, and removed my daughters bather bottoms to find something that, honest to God, in size would rival a chihuahua. I attempted to empty it down the drain, and then to rinse off the bathers.
While I was focused on cleaning the remaining mess from my daughter's backside, I was suddenly met with a terrified scream from my son, "Mummy! The poo! The poo, Mummy!"
Oh. My. Fuck. Just like in a horror movie, complete with staccato violins and a slo-motion monster scene, I witnessed the fountain of turd ooze up from the now-clearly-blocked drain, and begin to sludge its way down the slight slope of the shower cubicles. It slopped under the wall, and continued to slime it's way through every single one. Every. Single. One.
One by one the occupants of the other cubicles began to shriek, adding to the increasingly hysterical wailing from my son, "So yuck Mummy, so yuck! So much poo! The poo! THE POO!"
All the while my daughter grinned broadly, seemingly proud of all the commotion she was causing.

 I wanted to die. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole.
But there was no time to contemplate all the things I would rather be doing (which would be anything not involving a crowed shower block, a squealing son who was giving it all away, a daughter with seemingly endless bodily waste, and a never ending shit stream) I had to think fast.

 I want to tell you that I did the adult thing. That I apologized to the patrons, then went straight to a staff member so a plumber could be called, and the cleaners alerted.
I want to tell you I did that. But I didn't.

 What I did instead was manhandle my kids straight out of the shower block, and out the front exit of the complex, still followed by the sounds of disgust echoing from the showers.

 It was upon my hurried exit that I realized two things. First, that I had lost my bus card and could therefore not rely on public transport, and second, that the staff had already been alerted and between them and the patrons, it had quickly been deduced that it was my brood who were responsible for the brown river.
I guess in retrospect if their ages hadn't given them away, the crazy way I evacuated the building would have probably been a fairly excellent sign.

 I called a friend who, in between snorting laughter, assured me he would be there in 20 minutes to drive us home.
So I sat, waiting on the bench outside the complex. I should also point out that this building has giant glass windows, that are just perfect for staring through. The staff at the front desk, random patrons, and finally a cleaner with a wearied expression and a dirty mop and bucket, all took turns shooting death stares at me through the glass. I pretended not to see. I pretended I was a potato.
My secret spud-identity was only broken whenever my daughter would proudly announce to passers by, "I pooed in the pool. I pooed everywhere!" and I had to force a smile, whilst through gritted teeth threatening to gag her, as I give the passer by a 'Oh, the things these kids come out with!' kind of look.

 By the time my mate arrived I was borderline hysterical, and he did his best to keep his mocking to a reasonable level as he drove us all home.

 Later that night, once the kids were in bed, I promptly inhaled half a cask of wine and finally saw the amusing side. I then drunkenly called a few friends, and told this story. Finally, instead of crying I was laughing with them. I mean, if I had seen that in a movie, I would have laughed my ass off.

 I still haven't returned to that pool though, and I don't know if I will.
But that is my 'poo story'.
And as icky as it may be, and as traumatizing as it was, if I can share at and make others smile, it was well worth it.