The Turd to End All Turds

I often look with wonder on my young son. Sometimes I look at him and think “How can someone so young be so complex, perceptive, and articulate?” Sometimes I look at him and think “How did he get so big? How did these five years go so fast?” And sometimes I look at him and think “How can such a small person create such a huge amount of shit?”

About one out of four times that O. poops, his dump is so colossal that it clogs up the toilet. (A note on vocabulary: there was a time in my life that I did not use the word “poop.” Now that I have kids, those days are over. I have, I am proud to say, held out on the word “potty,” which I refuse to use for fear that I might wind up like my father, middle-aged and saying “Hold on, I just have to go potty.” Horrifying. But it’s gotten to the point that “poop” rolls off my tongue like grease through a goose. So to speak.) Part of O’s toilet-clogging habit is due to the fact that he holds on to things, tending to poop every couple three days instead of on a daily basis. (Don’t ask me where he gets it. My Old Man and I are both extremely regular.) But part of is just because he has these enormous dumps. You wouldn’t think such a skinny little scrapper could hold that much dookie.

For whatever reason, I have fallen into the role of official toilet declogger. Part of it may be that my Old Man takes care of most of the other dirty jobs: garbage, recycling, cat boxes. Part of it may be because, thanks to my Grandma passing on her plunger techniques to me, I’m just very good at it. In any case, when O. clogs the toilet, I’m the one who heads down to the basement to retrieve the plunger from its dungeon under the stairs. As a result, I always wait with an air of tense anticipation to hear the toilet flush successfully after O. poops.

Clogged toilets are now a commonplace, but the other day O. created a new kind of toilet emergency: the turd that will not leave.

Now if you’re squeamish, here’s where you need to stop reading. (Though, hopefully if you’re squeamish and not a masochist, you’ve already abandoned this post.)

So, O. jumped on the pot for his every-other-daily dump. And when he jumped off, I noted a monster of a turd in the bowl. It was long. It was thick. It was robust. I was nervous. There’s no way this thing is going down, I thought to myself. But, in good faith, I flushed. And it spun around a couple of times and promptly lodged itself in the opening at the bottom of the bowl. It was a little bit bent, but not the least bit bowed. It looked like it was there to stay. I waited a minute and tried flushing again. It bent just a tiny bit more, like an old man with a beer gut straining to touch his toes, but it did not budge. I tried one more flush. Nothing. That turd was going nowhere.

As the resident toilet declogger, I have great faith in the power of water to relax masses of fecal matter. If you just wait it out, sometimes the shit goes down on its own. I decided to let this one relax in the pool for awhile, and perhaps then it would slide down without assistance.

I told my Old Man about it. “We could break it up with something,” he suggested. Ah, yes. The domestic we. “We could break it up with something” translates to “You could break it up with something, resident toilet declogger.”

You’ve heard the expression “I wouldn’t touch him/her/it with a ten foot pole.” There are some things you don’t want to touch, not even with a stick. I was banking on the soak method. I’d give it a half an hour or so, then try again.

And then I promptly forgot about it. It was in the guest bathroom and easy to put completely out of my mind. The next morning I awoke from pleasant sleep with a panicked start: the stubborn turd! I was horrified that I’d left it stewing away in the guest room toilet all night. I jumped out of bed, hoping against hope that a its night soak would have left it pliable and ready to flush its way out of my life. I opened the lid, and flushed. It gave a bit more, bending into the space of the toilet drain, but stayed lodged. Fucking hell! I was just about to go put on shoes and head out into the freezing morning air to find a turd-poking stick, shuddering at the thought, when I decided to give it just one more try.

I flushed. It bent neatly in half, as if bowing graciously on its way out the door, and slipped down into obscurity.

Hallelujah!

(File under: Way more information than I wanted, thanks.)