The Crapper

     We all have these stories about our lives that, while the retelling of them usually causes everyone else to laugh, we do not find them so amusing. Whilst time does heal all wounds somewhat, it does nothing to heal our dignity after the happening of one of these 'adventures'.
     Who hasn’t heard about the eating the dog/cat food, the three year old peeing in some public place he was not supposed to, or the first day of school when so and so cut her hair to get ready? The list could go on and on, with each little story becoming more colorful with the retelling. At family gatherings we all try to make somebody else's embarrassing dilemma funnier than the ones we were involved in, until finally only a chosen few of the best of these stories are remembered at all future family gatherings, thereby garnering the honorable phrase of, ‘the family legend.’ We, each and every one of us have our very own family legends. Sad and rare indeed is the person who is not a part of some outrageous family foible.
     I have many of my own stories that I was a part of, and can still hear my mother laughing as she is about to begin her favorite tale. “You were only four years old when Grandma Lee had stopped in to visit us, on her way down from Maine. It was spring and we were living in North Carolina at the time. “
     I shudder when I hear those dreaded words, for I know what is coming. My dignity can only stand the retelling of the story no more than once a decade…maybe. I fear bringing my friends around my sister because she is mean enough to bring it up when I would rather that she forgot the whole thing entirely. Forever. I cannot help it if I picked that age in my life to be curious about where babies came from. Mom should have known better than to describe birthing pains as “that feeling you get when you have to go 'number two' really, awfully, bad.” I understood that explanation too well.
     My grandmother even brought it up on a visit to Florida when I was thirteen. You haven’t lived until you have had a whole restaurant full of your grandmother’s nearest and dearest senior citizen friends, find out that you had a problem with constipation when you were just a little guy. I could not help it if the straining of being constipated reminded me of that explanation my mother had given a few days before, and who can blame me for being scared? Sometimes constipation can be a scary thing.
     I actually remember the panic I felt in my little heart as I deduced that maybe I was not just going to the bathroom, and feared that something horrible was going to happen to me. I thought I was being quite brave and did not realize that, in the other end of the house, both my mother and my grandmother heard me as I was crying. The neighbor next door also heard me as well. I still say that neighbor had a powerful hearing aid on and it was turned up. Mom doesn’t remember her having one though.
     The bathroom, had a harsh yellow light to my eyes, on that long ago day, my little legs dangling over the edge of the toilet seat. I remember looking all around me and up at the ceiling, which seemed so high up over my head. I could not hear anyone in my end of the house, which was empty of all life. It felt as if I was the only person on the whole planet, and this awful thing was happening to me.
     Suddenly, like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day, there was my hero, the center of my world, she who made everything right..my Mom. She had heard me after all. She had this look of total concern on her face and I could hear it in her voice as she asked me what was wrong. “Why are you crying,?" she had to ask me a couple of times because I was so afraid to answer her, afraid she was going to be upset at me.
     Like a dam bursting amidst a torrential downpour, the words burst forth from me, “I THINK I'M HAVING A BABY AND I DON’T WANT ONE!!!!” Once the words were out, I knew that my Mom would make everything OK again. She would get rid of this problem and everything would be all right. I started to settle in to a good screaming fit because I was really scared and my belly hurt so bad. I looked to see how my statement had galvanized my mother into action, and where she had gone to,
     That is when I heard it. A funny gurgling, choking sound, coming from the hallway. I realized, at some point, that it was my mother...and, unbelievably, my grandmother. Having the both of them there to help me would make everything better faster. No sooner had the thought occurred then my mother came back into the room, the picture of a loving and concerned mother, asking me why I thought I was having a baby.
     “Because I have to poop, really, really bad and it hurts something awful,” was my reply, "You said having a baby was like that. You said it when I asked you about where babies come from. I can’t poop, but I have to and it hurts so bad just like you said having a baby does. I don’t wanna have a baby.”  The words continued to spill from me interspersed with great shuddering sobs, along with the panic, and the tears. I finally opened my eyes taking a look at my mother. She who loved me more than anything on Earth. It was then that the realization dawned on me that my mother wasn’t as upset as I thought she should be. Unbelievably, she was laughing.
     She was trying not to and that was where the choking noises I heard were coming from. I could hear Grandma Lee as well outside the door and she was doing the same. She wasn't even trying to hide it like Mom was.
      “IT’S NOT FUNNY,” I hollered. “I DON”T WANNA HAVE A BABY," as the sobs continued to be wrung from my tiny little frame. The cramps from my bowels were doubling me over on the toilet still, and the indignity of my being the center of attention at such a time was almost too much to bear, for by now my brother and sister were out in the hallway wanting to know what was going on. So were the kids from next door who always came over to play with us. I could hear them all laughing.
     “But my son," my mother gasped, "you can’t be having a baby. It’s not possible,” she said, by now outright laughing. “Calm down, I promise you aren’t having a baby,  it is not possible for you to have babies.”
     “Why not?” I sniffed asking suspiciously. “How do you know I’m not having a baby?”
     The merest glimmer of hope was starting to form in my mind, it was enough to allow me, for the first time in what seemed like hours, to take in great gasping breaths. Mom sounded awfully sure of herself, and she and Grandma Lee were still laughing...a lot. Grandma Lee looked a lot like she was sitting on the floor to be quite honest, which in my young brain I found quite odd. "STOP LAUGHING AT ME,!" I hollered at the bathroom door. I had to holler, as the laughter on the other side of that door, was beginning to get quite loud.
     “Son, you can’t have a baby because you are a boy, and boys can't have babies. Only girls can have babies and not until they are grown up like Mommy,” Mom choked out. Grandma Lee was laughing again and making funny little snorting noises that were the sounds she made as she desperately tried to stop laughing and breathe.
     Throughout the whole traumatic episode, on that long ago day, my mother kept coming in and out of the bathroom to talk to me and then she would go out in the hall to hold up Grandma Lee or have Grandma Lee hold her up, I was never really sure which. All the both of them ever said after the “incident” was that they had never laughed so hard in their whole lives. Not even when Mom accidently dropped a perfume bottle and broke it in the Sear’s store at the mall. In her haste to get out of the store she ran right into a mannequin on the store floor and automatically said. “Oh, excuse me, I am so sorry," and tried to pick it up and fix it, finally fleeing the store in sheer mortification at the whole event.
     That incident always made me feel more...even, whenever she brings up my incident. Now I have something to counter with, in the family version of “That’s not as bad as the time you…” I may not win the game, but I am not the only one who had people rolling around on the floor.