Me and Sam in the Bathroom

My sister hannaH and her husband Dale have this two-year-old son named Sam -- first grandchild in our family and brighter and more amusing than any of us had any right to expect. Sam and I have a good time when we’re together, though he disapproves of the way I play. He’s pretty literal about most of what he does. Dump trucks dump, helicopters fly, etc., so it bothers him to a greater degree than you’d think it might when I take one of his trucks and put it to my ear and answer it like a telephone.

“Hello,” I’ll say. “Hello? Sam, it’s for you.”

And I get this look from him that’s closer to concern than mere disapproval. It’s the look that I imagine hannaH might give him if he put his underpants in his mouth or licked the dog. He’ll shake his head at me and say, “No no, Ben,” and again it’s easy to imagine that tone of voice coming from my sister. And it’s not that he’s scolding me as much as he’s looking out for me -- you just can’t go around answering helicopters -- unless I press it.

Some of you are aware that I’ve a tendency to beat something funny into the ground until someone wants to kill me. (Some of you have experienced this firsthand and have forgiven me; no doubt the rest of you will have that opportunity at some point.) So I continue to answer things when all Sam wants to do is play like you’re supposed to.

Pick up the baseball. Put it to my ear.

“Hello? Well how do you do sir? Very well thank you, and you?”

And I get The Look.

“Oh…can’t complain. How’s the missus?”

And in a matter of seconds it’s, “ No no, Ben.”

And if he hasn’t had his nap, or if I’ve pressed it for too long, he’ll snatch the offending non-telephone from my hand. Now he’s put out with me. I have, as we say in my family, Gone Too Far, but all it takes to put things right is my dropping it, (Sam forgives more quickly and completely than most of the people I know,) and we’re cool again. Back to trains on tracks and Kings in Castles and no, the dragon is not ringing.

So we were all together at my folks’ house not long ago. Sam was on my lap and we were driving cars on a couple large oak blocks leftover from when my mom had her kitchen remodeled. They’d crash into each other and pull each other from the brink of the abyss between my knees. He pointed out the lights on the front of one of his cars and I made the mistake of mentioning that they, along with the grille, looked like a face.

“No, they’re lights.”

Couldn’t resist. “That doesn’t look like a face to you?”

“They’re lights.”

“No kidding? Not even a little bit? See the mouth? And these are the eyes.”

Sam was having none of it.

“They’re lights.”

“Suit yourself.”

And damned if that car didn’t pick that exact moment to ring.

“Hello? Sam, it‘s for you.”

Well, he was already a little off-center about the face/grille-of-a-car debate, which left him with absolutely no patience for the phone game. I let it go.

In a second he was off my lap and standing on the floor facing me, clutching at his bottom saying, “Go to the bathroom.”

This isn’t something I’m used to dealing with, (yeah, I know it’s coming,) and I must’ve given hannaH a lost look because she came and grabbed Sam and whisked him off to the bathroom. He’s definitely rounded third in his journey toward full blown Potty Trained Independence, but he’s not quite there yet, (neither am I for that matter,) so it was time for Action. hannaH got him into the bathroom, but Sam made it clear that he wanted me to help him with his business.

Though this is something I’d never done, at hannaH’s urging I made my way to the bathroom and prepared to help a two-year-old take a dump, whatever that ended up meaning. Sam has a little plastic step-stool that he uses to climb up onto the toilet and when I arrived and stuck my head into the bathroom he had it in his hands and was looking toward the doorway waiting for me. He looked me in the eyes with a look more grave than I thought a kid that young capable of. A look that said, we play around a lot you and I, and I like you, but this is weighty business and if you’re going to be here for this, for me, you’ve got to take it for the serious matter that it is. No screwing around -- this has to go well. That’s what his look said. His mouth, as he lifted his little stool up for emphasis, said,

“This is not a phone.”

“Deal.”

So there we were, Sam and I. He with his step-stool in hand and that look in his eyes, I with no idea what came next.

The little fella set the step-stool down, climbed up onto it and stood facing the toilet, awaiting my help. hannaH, who was standing in the doorway, realized that I had not a clue what to do, gave me a some guidance and soon we were on our way. Down came the britches and now here’s this two year old who needs to go and he’s turned around and is facing me with his little doodle sticking out and he’s wondering what’s taking this guy so long.

“Get him up there,” hannaH says.

I look at Sam’s bottom and at the toilet seat, which has morphed in to a gaping maw ready to swallow the kid whole.

“He’ll fall in,” I say to my sister, and mean it. I’m panicking.

And at this moment, hannaH must be loving life. My kid sister having to show her smart-ass, older brother how to sit a two-year-old on the toilet. All those years of sibling condescension reversed in the time it takes to wedge this bare-bottomed little boy in the crook at the front of the seat. She grins at me, and her amusement is married to a satisfaction that it’s impossible to miss and unnecessary to comment on.

“I’m gonna leave you boys to it,” she says, and now it’s official. “You boys,” implying unmistakably that Sam and I are very much in the same Clueless But Beginning to Catch On boat. This is acceptable for Sam -- he’s the actual two-year-old here. I on the other hand am thirty-two and have spent most of my life with a smug look on my face; a look which, at that moment, I believe the world has seen the last of.

I squat in front of him like Lance Parrish and say, “Alright buddy, get after it.”

He just stares at me.

“I’m done.”

“Did you go?” Maybe I missed it.

“Yes.” I stand and peek into the wide space between Sam’s butt and the back of the toilet seat and see nothing floating or sinking and can’t believe what’s happening.

“No you didn’t.”

He pees.

“Done.”

“I thought you had to take a crap,” I remind him, and catch myself wondering if “crap” is acceptable nomenclature in my sister’s house. I expect to be corrected for saying it, expect to hear her from the other room -- “No no, Benny.” But she says nothing, which tells me that either we’re okay or she’s too amused by the whole scene to care. Either way.

“Come on dude,” I say. “Pound one out for me.”

I’m begging someone to take a crap and I’m watching intently. This is surreal.

Sam’s beginning to be upset now. Whatever moved him to request a trip to the bathroom has apparently passed, or at least outlived his attention span, and he wants off.

“Let’s have a poopy.” I’m trying to sound excited now, and say it the way I might say, “Let’s go for ice cream,” but he’s not stupid, and now it’s getting desperate.

“No thanks.” This is Sam’s two-year old version of a pleading, “Please.” It’s a phrase he uses frequently to beg out of something he doesn’t want to do, and the more dire the situation becomes the more pronounced the cry in his voice becomes when he says it.

“No thanks,” and he is almost in tears. He doesn’t want this at all and I am confounded. I stick my head outside the door into the living room where my sister is blithely talking with my wife and my mother, oblivious to the drama being played out in the bathroom.

“He says he doesn’t have to go,” I tell her.

“He has to go.”

“He says he doesn’t.”

“He stopped playing, grabbed his bottom and told you he had to go. He’s learning; he can sit there.”

Back to the bathroom where nothing has changed.

“Did you go?” I ask him with no real hope.

“Yes.”

I look again and find that he has not.

“No you didn’t. Come on dude. Your madre says you’re gonna sit on the commode until you’ve gone,” and now I’m the one whining.

He gives me a perplexed look, and says, “Commode?”

“Commode” is a word that Aunt Marji used when we were kids and it hadn’t occurred to me that I haven’t heard anyone but myself use it since then.

“Yeah, that’s the commode.” I nod toward the toilet.

Sam points to the porcelain beneath him and confirms, “Commode?”

“Commode.”

And there‘s a wonder in his eyes that reminds me exactly what‘s going on here. A two-year-old, still new to the world around him, whose vocabulary must still be doubling every few days, learning to take a dump.

Now we both hear the front door open and my dad has come home. Sam’s “Papa,” and without question or competition his favorite person in the world. I stand and hug him, (the bathroom is right by the front door,) but Sam is anchored to the toilet and can’t. It makes him crazy.

“Papa! Papa! Papa!”

Papa smiles at Sam perched there on his seat and says “hi“, but has never been one to hang around in the bathroom when someone else is that kind of busy, so he moves on into the living room and now Sam is distraught. His eyes plead with me. Pitiful. I want to let him off the hook but am afraid of his mother.

“Sam, you’ve got to finish.”

“NO THANKS!” and he’s calling for his Papa.

“Sam. All you have to do is pinch a loaf for me and you can go see Papa.” If this doesn’t do it, I will give up.

His jaw clenches, face turns red, left eye tears up just the least little bit. Finally he exhales, bears down one more time. Exhales again and his eyes widen toward me in an unspoken plea.

I ask, again, “Did you make some dookie?”

He tells me, again, “Yes.”

I look again, and am unimpressed, but clearly there has been some action. Not what I expected -- it looks more like some kind of farm animal has sneezed peanut butter into the bowl than what I’m used to seeing after that kind of pushing. I don’t know what to do. Does that count? Should I demand more? Again I stick my head around the corner into the living room.

“hannaH, what does a two-year-old dump look like? How much do we need here?”

“Not much,” she tells me. “He’s only two. If there’s anything there at all, you’re done.”

Good enough for me.

I go back and double-check and the peanut butter sneeze is still bobbing there so I tell him, “Alright buddy, you’re done.” When he doesn’t immediately hop off and run to Papa I realize that he needs my help to get down from the pot and get his britches pulled back up, so I reach for him, but he doesn’t react like someone would who needed help getting down. He leans forward…like someone who needs help with…now wait a damn minute.

“hannaH, I am not wiping this kid’s anus!”

She’s in the bathroom now, and smiling. I leave for the living room and find a seat, but Sam begins to cry, loudly, “I want Ben to do it! Ben do it! Please!"

But it’s not going to happen.

Yeah, I know: The day will come when it’ll be my turn. When my own child will be sitting, filthy, on a commode and I will wipe him. When either because it’s my job or my turn or Ruthie isn’t around or because something paternal kicks in and allows me to want to do it. When I do it because it has to be done. When any of a dozen factors contribute to its happening. When I realize that it’s not that bad and receive for my efforts the gratingly patronizing clucks of parents who have come before. That day will surely come.

But it will not be this day.

I get up, make my way back to the bathroom, scene of one of the most bizarre and real and amusing experiences of my life, lock eyes with him one more time and say, from the heart,

“No no, Sam.”