Archive for the ‘Carter’ tag
Beware the Deuce
It’s fitting that my baby and dog walking fantasy was ruined by shit, because as anyone with children or dogs knows, at some point their entire life became obsessed with it. I spent the first 28 years of mine avoiding it; now I follow my dog around with a plastic bag to collect and preserve it like some sort of fecal packrat, and I have in-depth discussions with my wife about the color, texture, and odor of Carter’s dirty diapers.
In the city, we clean up after our dogs under pain of littering fines and social ostracism by our neighbors, so I quickly became accustomed to the sickly warm feeling of dog poop through the plastic bag in my hand as I collected it for the garbage. We hired a dog walker to handle this chore for our first dog Cleo during the day while we were at work. Tony was discreet but meticulous in the daily reports he jotted down for us on a marker board on the fridge. “Cleo was happy today. Good walk, played well with others. #1 and #2,” he wrote. Some days we saw “Just #1″ or “No #2″ and knew we’d have to be more patient on the evening walk. Our current dog, Bootsy, has a knack for taking his dumps at the point precisely equidistant from every trash can on the block, so I have to walk as far as possible before I can throw it away. Every dog wants to please his master, so I’m sure Bootsy does this because he thinks it will make me happy. To him, the way I cheer and pounce on his turds every time he goes must be proof positive that I love his stuff, so the longer I can parade around with it, the better.
With so much scatological experience from the dogs, changing diapers was the one thing I didn’t fear about having a baby. But after almost a year now I know I should have been scared. Carter made this clear the first time we changed his diaper after bringing him home from the hospital. We put him on our “changing table,” the top of a dresser in our newly converted home office/baby room, took off his dirty diaper, and picked up his legs to clean his bottom. Then, as if on cue, when he was positioned perfectly to do the most damage, he launched a stream of liquid doody across the table and all over the nearby computer desk, narrowly missing an open file drawer. Debbie and I shrieked, and my mother, hearing the commotion from the other room, hurried in to see what was the matter. Upon seeing the mess while Debbie and I were still recoiling in disgust, she cackled in delight. “I love it,” she said. “This is payback for all those messes you made.”
Now of course, hundreds of 10-pound diapers later, a little spillage is old hat. The occasional smear, smudge, or crap under the fingernail doesn’t bother me. I walk around for a half-hour after changing Carter blaming Bootsy for the smell, only to realize that I’d inadvertently wiped my hand on my pants after it slipped into the wrong side of the Pampers. Debbie at least maintains a healthy revulsion to these accidents. “Oh my God, do I have poop on me?” she says, dancing around and patting her clothes like a bee flew down her shirt. On the other hand, I’m dangerously nonchalant about it. Last week I managed to get some on my forearm but just left it there until I finished changing Carter and pulling up his britches. I have a recurring nightmare in which I stop to talk to a neighbor, not realizing I have a piece of baby shit stuck to my collar. Familiarity breeds contempt, as they say, and I fear that my careless handling of the deuce will one day betray me. Meanwhile dignity slips farther out of reach.
