Bowled over by toilet humor
Since becoming a mom, I’ve had all sorts of cliches kindly thrown at me: They’re not little for long! The days are long, but the years are short! You need only worry when they’re quiet!
That last one, I recently learned, is just as true as the others.
One of my son’s favorite games is Taking Things Out of One Thing and Moving Them to Another Thing (TTOOOTAMTTAT). He loves opening my sock drawer, dragging one sock across the bedroom and tossing the clean hosiery into the hamper. After filling the hamper, he one-by-one takes the socks out of it and returns them to the empty drawer – all the while, grinning like he’s accomplishing the most incredible task.
On a recent morning following a night of not great sleep, I decided to give myself a break and let my son practice playing independently. We holed up in my bedroom where, just as I expected, he gleefully began playing TTOOOTAMTTAT while I cozied up on the floor with my book club book.
I watched for a few minutes as my son, wearing a smile that took up his whole wide face, marched between the sock drawer and the hamper. Satisfied he was having the time of his life, I cracked open my book and lost myself in another world, looking up occasionally to respond to my little boy’s earnest babblings. Time passed pleasantly. Too pleasantly. About a chapter into the novel, I realized the room was … quiet.
Hyper aware of the lingering silence, I tore myself from the book and scanned the room. Bedroom door, closed, check. Dog lounging lazily on his oversized bed, check. Son playing innocently … ah, there he was, little legs propelling him forward, from the bathroom back into the bedroom. From the bathroom?!, I thought, alarmed.
“What’re you doing?” I asked in a voice dripping honey. Delighted, my son squealed and pulled a long, black compression sock (a remnant of my pre-motherhood running days) from the drawer.
“Another sock!” I exclaimed, encouraging his play. “Do you think it goes in the hamper?”
To my surprise, my son walked past the hamper.
“Does it go on the bookshelf?” I wondered, genuinely, but my son passed the bookshelf, too.
“Hmm, where do you think the sock …” I began; and then, as my son entered the bathroom, I said, more sternly, “No, no, we don’t throw away …”
He wasn’t throwing socks in the trash can, though. I watched, dumbfounded, as my sweet baby boy let out a delighted laugh and tossed the sock into the toilet. With one long stride I crossed the room and stood next to my son, who looked up at me, pleased as punch with his “reorganization” of the sock drawer, as I looked down in horror at a toilet overflowing in socks.
The instinct to scold my son was usurped by an overwhelming urge to laugh. I didn’t want to encourage this behavior, but the toilet water was clean, my son hadn’t tried flushing the socks, and everything about the moment – the colorful arrangement of socks floating in a commode, my son’s big, brown eyes gleaming, the fact I’d let it happen, really – was sitcom-funny, and I could not hold back a belly laugh. My son’s giggles harmonized with my own, and the two of us stood, cracking up at his very boyish behavior.
“We don’t do this,” I said finally, shaking my head, a smile still on my lips. “We don’t put clothes in the toilet.”
Like my son placing the socks one-by-one into the commode, I removed the garments and tossed them in the hamper he usually put them in (clean water or not, those toilet-y socks were not going on my feet before being washed!).
“You’re something else,” I laughed, patting my son’s head.
Then I left my book club book on the floor and led my little guy into his bedroom, where real, fun toys are kept. While we began a raucous game of pushing wooden cars around the room, I made a mental note to keep the bathroom door closed and my eyes open, even when practicing independent play.
Because it might not be a cliche, but kids are never too young to start with the toilet humor.
Katherine Mansfield is a former staff writer for the Observer-Reporter who now serves as a full-time mom and freelance writer. When she isn’t chasing her toddler around, she pens essays, poems and fiction at https://katherinemansfield.substack.com/.