Big Daddy Paul

There comes a special time in every parent’s life when their child becomes potty trained and you can officially tell the diaper companies to go screw themselves. For us, it happened when Malcolm was about 3 years and 2 months old. If that seems a little late to you, it is because we don’t like touching feces and did not want to push Malcolm into anything he wasn’t ready for. We (Amy) decided that we would wait until he told us that he was ready to wear big boy underpants and use the potty. To entice him into this transformation, we slyly inserted questions into conversations that he had positive associations with: “What’s your favorite ice cream flavor? Do want to wear your big boy underpants?” Or: “Let’s go eat donuts, wanna go potty first?” For the longest time, his answers were almost always, “No!” until one day he said, “Yes!” His answer was, “Yes” every day after that, and we had a grand total of one accident during the transition. Both Amy and I were happy that the road to potty-trainingville was not soiled with human waste.

Chief among Malcolm's reasons for wanting to be potty trained: scalp irritation.

Until recently. In the past week, we have had two incidents whereby Malcolm has soiled himself. The first took place at school (luckily!) and involved Malcolm pooping all over himself in what his teachers referred to as a slight case of “heat stroke.” The second incident occurred when we conducted a little experiment to see if Malcolm would feel safe if we turned off his nightlight. (He woke up shrieking bloody murder and then pissed himself, so it’s safe to say that the nightlight will continue to burn brightly in his room for some time to come.)

I am not concerned that he is regressing but I still wonder whether we can honestly say he is potty trained. The reason I ask is that he will attending camps this summer and a new preschool next year and I wonder whether I need to disclaim his recent mishaps.

Q: How old is your child? A: 4.

Q: Is your child potty trained? A: Yes, except when having a heat stroke. Or, when scared shitless. (Literally!)

I guess this level of honesty could be quite refreshing. Sure, there have been times when control over my own bodily functions is a bit suspect, and I guess those around me deserve to know what they might be in store for. (The best advice I can give is to not stand near me whenever I am in the great state of Nevada.) I could also see the utility around old people, who might do a service to others by wearing large buttons that say, “If I have been eating popcorn or eggs, stand back!!!” Then again a little discretion might work too. I’ll probably just mark, “Yes” on the applications for summer camps.

Hi, my name is Paul. I write this blog. I am going to take a moment to depart from my normal hard hitting topics and discuss something of great significance with you today. Actually, my mind is kinda drawing a blank right now. Isn’t there somewhere in the world that is going through a great deal of suffering right now?  I guess I’ll spend the rest of the post talking about how nice my legs look in shorts. Yowza!

Actually, this is good. I can talk about my blog. I started this blog to talk about what it is like to travel to Europe with Malcolm and Amy. Then, I wrote long posts about funny things that happened to us in the world. Now, my blog posts are shorter (yay!) but occur more often (boo!).  They usually have a specious link to reality and reveal a shocking lack of taste. I try to also show lots of pictures of Malcolm.

I write this blog because I enjoy trying to make people laugh. If you have ever met me, you can undoubtedly tell a story or two about how I have removed my pants at an inappropriate setting or taken a conversation so far outside the bounds of polite society that you cringe and laugh at the same time (Linging? Craughing?) I am a ham, and this blog allows me to ham it up. I am forever grateful that Amy lets me do this instead of clean the house or learn how to cook meatballs. Plus, I writing about the pain of child rearing is cathartic. I don’t really know what that means, I just want you all to be impressed that I know how to use fancy words (like craughing!).

That’s where you all come in. You brighten my day when you tell Amy or I that you enjoy reading this. I love waking up in the morning and a) I don’t find any Vietnamese men around and b) I find reader comments on the blog. Comments on a blog are like applause after an ice skating routine. I don’t watch ice skating, but I imagine it would be pretty embarrassing to finish your magical routine only to have an entire arena sit on their hands. A comment tells me that you’re reading and that you might be coming back tomorrow. I really do appreciate them.

So, here’s what I want you to do. If you like the post, leave a comment. It obviously won’t be as witty as the stuff I write, but that’s OK. I am quite clever. You can tell me what you ate for breakfast. You can tell me what book you are reading. You can tell me that you find me oddly attractive, like if you put Tom Selleck’s head on a corn dog. You don’t even have to introduce it, just write things like “Biscuit, or Catcher in the Rye.” Sharing is caring, and I would love to hear from the people who read this. I guarantee that if you leave a comment with a totally useless piece of information in it, I will smile. If you are so inclined, you could also become my fan on Facebook, the button should be on the right of this page. Then we can share irrelevant information on multiple platforms.

Lastly, tell a friend.  I don’t know where this thing is going, but I could get their faster if everyone in the world read my blog. Actually, you know that place in the world where all the people are doing all that suffering? It would all end if they just tuned in to bigdaddypaul.com. The only way to save them is to get the word out. Thanks everyone! And now, without further ado:

This post is the written version of the Sesame Street bit where they talk to all of the different people around the block. Instead of interviewing the people and being sweet, I am going to be sarcastic and talk trash. Call it Sesame Street for bitter stay at home parents.

I like the Butcher Lady at the Grocery store. She is super cute and really into Malcolm and I. Every time we see her, we are met with a steady stream of  free slices of ham and salami. Actually, she could be a super mean troll, but as long as we would be met with a steady stream of free salami and ham, we would like her. When Malcolm is not with me, she asks about him. She brings a little ray of sunshine to the world of cured meats.

I believe that the coolest guy in the world is our garbage man. I am not sure that I have ever talked to him, but we converse like old school chums through a complex system of winks and nods. We greet each other on Thursdays with a big smile and Malcolm totally enjoys watching him work. Things are so tight between us that he gives me special privileges. Sometimes, I am late getting the garbage cans out, and he actually comes back for them. He also lets me dump dead bodies in the back of the garbage truck.  I would like to try and strike up a conversation with him one of these days, but the noise from the truck is deafening and his ride smells like shit.

I am creeped out by the manager at the bank. He is a really friendly guy, but has one quirk so amazingly weird that I fixate on it. He fingers are extremely long and way to0 knuckly. It’s as if he has three extra joints in each finger and each knuckle points the digit in a new and unexpected direction. I can’t imagine how hard it is to control those things, it must be like orchestrating a fistful of old churros. I had to watch him write out a loan application once, and I nearly threw up. He asks about Malcolm and Amy whenever we meet and we sometimes chat about the economy. While doing this, all I can think is, “Show me your fangled claws! Whip ‘em out and scratch someone in the face!!!”

The one person I am on the fence about is our Mail lady. We have a bit of a checkered past. When we first moved into our house we began noticing that someone was leaving plastics bags in our gutter. A closer examination revealed that the bags were filled with urine. At least I thought they were filled with urine, I did not actually smell or taste the liquid for verification.

Artists re-creation of the trucker bomb

We noticed a steady stream of peebags for a while when I arrived home one day and found the mail lady sitting in her truck speaking on her cell phone. Right by the door of her truck was another trucker bomb, perfectly aligned with the open window. It appeared that she had been peeing into a plastic bag and then tossing the bag out her window before leaving. I am not sure if she peed in front of our house or did it on the route and just saved the bag for us, although I can’t tell which option I prefer. So why am I on the fence? It has been a few years since we have been peebagged, and it’s like we have reached a sort of detente. It’s like the old adage goes, “A postal delivery worker who pees in a bush is worth more than two who pee in a bag and ditch that bag in front of your house.” I’m not sure who said it, but it’s pretty famous.

So, those are the people in my hood. Who are your people?

I went biking again today. Between the holidays and all the rain in the past few weeks, I haven’t been able to head out for a while. Determined to not the mistakes I have made in the past, I set out for some fun in the sun. My plans were almost shanghaied when my bike had two flat tires and I couldn’t find the tire pump. I knew it was in the garage but our garage looks like the inside of my colon, except with more spiderwebs. After poking around for 45 minutes, I found the pump, pumped up the tires, and decided that cleaning our garage was way overdue. (I remain blissfully ignorant about the ramifications of my colon being in its current shape.)

I started in a bit of a deficit when I noticed that I had grabbed Amy’s biking gloves for my outing. Since they are only partially frilly, I didn’t care all that much. I did feel just a tad extra pretty knowing that I was wearing ladies accessories. When I finally got out there, I had a great time!

An otherwise nice day

My Ipod expertly selected my favorite songs  (which sadly include selections from Twisted Sister, 2 Live Crew, and Erasure) while I nimbly navigated between the hordes of walkers that were enjoying the nice morning. I got a great workout, and knew so because I, for some reason, feel like I need to spit when working hard, and I spit many times during the ride. I also didn’t have to get off the bike and walk up any hills, so the outing was almost a complete success.

Almost is a pretty big word though for me, and I had another one of my moments. Blazing away around a turn singing (out loud) Weird Al’s opus to Star Wars, I encountered two women walking in the path. I announced my intention to pass on the left, but for some reason one of the women hopped right in front of me. Being a bit rusty, I jammed on the front brake. This had the foreseeable consequence of causing me to do a reverse wheelie and ended up ejecting me over the handle bars. I landed with the soft thud a pork shoulder makes when thrown onto the scale at the butcher, but managed to avoid any serious injury. Anxious to prove that I wasn’t hurt, I hopped right back up, looking at my legs to see if there was any residual damage. At precisely this moment, I realized that my fly was down (as it oft is) and immediately took corrective action. I also noticed the numerous trails of spit that had been collecting on my shoulder. I looked at them, they looked at me, and one of them asked if I was alright. I quickly hopped back on my bike, apologized for some reason, and then sped off. I was a tad irked afterwards, but smiled when I considered the story the two women would be relating to their friends:

A chubby cross dresser came barreling around a corner singing about Queen Amidala, screamed, “ON YOUR LEFT!” and then jumped over his handlebars. Then, he stood up looking like a confused monkey, zipped his fly, wiped his mouth on his shirt, grunted, “I’m sorry” and sped away. It was honestly the first time it had ever happened to me.

I think I am going to choose a new path next time I ride. Or maybe I’ll just find something to do that is less embarrassing.