The Crapper...version2

    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. While 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, with each little story becoming more colorful with each telling. 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, garnering the honorable title of, ‘The Family Legend.’ We, each and every one of us have our very own family legends that we try to forget about. Rare indeed is the person who sadly, 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 at some tale she tells of my brother and I as children. Time is no gentler to my children, and one day my youngest son and I got on the subject of embarrassing family stories and he proceeded to tell me his rendition of ...'The Incident.' “I was only four years old when Grandma Lee stopped in to visit on her way down from Maine to Florida. It was spring and we were living in North Carolina at the time. “
     "Do you know I shudder when I hear those dreaded words, for I know what is coming," my son says. "My dignity can only stand the telling of the story no more than once a decade…maybe. I am afraid of bringing my friends around my sister because she is mean and brings it up when I would rather that she forgot the whole thing forever. I cannot help it if I picked that age in my life to be curious about where babies came from. Mom,' he says, sadly shaking his head, "you 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 only too well."
     "My grandmother even brought it up on our 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," and at this point he stopped and looked at me, "Why do old people seem to be so fascinated with bowel movements?" Not giving me the time to answer he carries on with his story, "I couldn't help it if the straining of being constipated reminded me of that explanation you 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 figured that maybe I was not just going to the bathroom, and feared that something horrible was going to happen to me, by now my son was up and pacing around the room, "I thought I was being quite brave and didn't realize you guys heard me in the other end of the house."
     "The neighbor next door also heard you as well," I interjected at this point.
     "The bathroom," he continued after looking at me, "had a harsh yellow light and my little legs dangled 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. It felt as if I was the only person on the whole planet, and this awful thing was happening to me."
     "Suddenly, there was my hero, the center of my world, she who made everything right..my Mom. You had heard me after all. You had this look of total concern on your face and I could hear it in your voice also as you asked me, repeatedly, “Why are you crying,?"
     "I remember it was like a dam bursting amidst a torrential downpour, the words spilling from me, 'I THINK I'M HAVING A BABY AND I DON’T WANT ONE!!!!' Once the words were out, I knew that you would make everything OK again. You 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."
     "Then I heard a funny gurgling, choking sound, coming from the hallway. I realized then, that it was you and, unbelievably, my grandmother. Having the both of you there to help me would make everything better faster. No sooner had the thought occurred, then you came back into the room, the picture of a loving and concerned parent, 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.”  I remember the words continuing to spill from me in between great shuddering sobs, along with panic, and tears. I finally open my eyes taking a look at you; that is when  I realize you were laughing."
     "Oh, I could see how you were trying not to," he waggled his finger at me, "that is where the choking noises were coming from. I could hear Grandma Lee outside the door too, she wasn't even trying to hide it like you were," he stated with some agitation.
      "I am in there hollering that I do not want to have a baby and telling you that it really was not funny, and all you guys can do is laugh. The cramps from my bowels were doubling me over on the toilet still, and then there was the indignity of it all, because 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 and you just had to tell them. I could hear everybody laughing and that was making everything worse."
      "'You can’t be having a baby. It’s not possible,' was all you kept saying, and you were outright laughing by this point. 'Calm down, I promise you aren’t having a baby,'”
     "Do you know, that I remember thinking, 'How does she know?" At this point I tried to answer his question, but he was on quite a roll by now in his story-telling. "That is when I started to calm down," he went on,  "I figured if you were laughing then it was not anything to be afraid of; the fact you kept on laughing though became quite humiliating.
     "You sounded awfully sure of yourself. You 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 I found quite strange. STOP LAUGHING AT ME,! I was hollering at the bathroom door. I remember 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,' was what you finally choked out. Grandma Lee was laughing again; making snorting noises as she tried to stop laughing and breathe."
     I remembered , as I listened to my son go on and on, that throughout his whole traumatic episode, I kept going in and out of the bathroom to talk to my him and then going out in the hall to help my own mother as she lay laughing on the floor. All we ever said after the “incident” was that we had never laughed so hard in our whole lives. Not even when I told her how I had accidentally dropped a perfume bottle and broke it in the Sear’s store at the mall. In my haste to get out of the store, I ran right into a mannequin on the store floor and automatically said. “Oh, excuse me, I am so sorry," I tried to pick it up and fix it, finally fleeing the store in sheer mortification at the whole event, smelling rather like a French bordello. My son may win the war in the family battle of who was the most embarrassed, I too, knew how to have someone rolling around on the floor.