Spend enough time around toddlers and old people and it doesn’t take long before you realize that bodily functions is a favorite conversation topic. With toddlers, I think it’s because it’s something they’re learning to master, whereas with old people, their ability to control it is slipping away. Either way, someone’s just getting out of diapers or heading back into them again.

My nearly 4 year old daughter is potty-trained, but we’re not yet at the point where the process has become a banal duty. There’s some sort of impish delight in visiting every single public restroom in existence, simply because they’re there. If there’s a restroom in a shopping mall, store or restaurant, I can describe it to you because we’ve paid a visit. 

I don’t think the insistence on the restroom visits has to do with Tiny Bladder Syndrome (a trait the women in my family do seem to have, myself included) but simply because for her, It’s Fun To Do. This means that even if she goes before we leave the house, every shopping expedition and restaurant meal is interrupted by “I needs to go potty.”

This insistence naturally hits a fever pitch when Number Two is involved. We were at Longhorn tonight, attempting to enjoy a family dinner, when the kid pulled out the wild card: “Mommy, I needs to go POOP!” You may as well have put her on the PA because everyone heard it anyway. Oh, and this came not 5 minutes after the previous visit to Pottyland. Apparently, her gut didn’t get the memo that we were already in the restroom and gave its signal as soon as I sat back down to dig into my steak.

Attempting to make light of the fact that dinner was about to go down the toilet, I joked to my husband as he carted her butt off this time to the restroom that our daughter needed her own social media app: PoopDeck. (And yes, this did get tweeted by me. There’s no telling how many followers dropped me or weird fetishists I just inadvertently attracted.)

Adding insult to irony, the kid returns a few minutes later: “Mommy, I have POOP ON MY UNDERWEAR!!!” No sotto voce, no inside voice. All of Longhorn goes silent for a moment. I just put my head in my arms and laughed. These moms that think they’re going to potty train their child in a day or a week are smoking something crazazy. It’s a process that actually takes a couple of YEARS to master and really, it’s not until they’re at least 5 or 6 before it’s no longer a big deal – except of course, for poop jokes.

Hmmmm…I think I know my target audience for PoopDeck!

(Photo credit: TerryJohnston on Flickr)