I decide to take my boys on a picnic to a rather obscure park near the house where I grew up.  It is a large place for them to run and a place that holds some good memories for me.  They are genuinely interested in my stories (unlike Daisy) and will ask me questions.  I know they will never find me more interesting, or funny, than they do now so I try to take full advantage of my opportunities while they last.  Well, Fire assisted in making yet another memory for me except this time it will be as an adult.  And I will make sure it becomes a memory for him so he can pass it down to his children.

We have been trying to potty train Fire for a while now.  You think of a method and we have done it.  Beast is really to blame for all the frustration because he was potty trained at 25 months and fully capable of holding urine during the night a month later.  Three years later and he has never had an accident.  He has a sphincter of iron and a bladder of steel.  So Fire is three years old and starting to get it.  He has also become quite manipulative in needing to go potty about 15 minutes after being laid down for the night.  Pushing out a quarter of an inch turd and expecting a popcorn movie night.  And you know what?  We do it.  We get Beast out of bed and stream a Phineas and Ferb show off of netflix. 

So we are at the park and Fire states, "I have to poop" and gets down from the bench.  He looks at me like, "Where should I start walking?" as I look around and spot absolutely nothing.  There used to a Honeybucket outhouse and a working water fountain but both have since been taken away.  I didn't want him to go in his pants since that is no fun for anyone.  Well, maybe Fire since he seems to think it is hilarious for us to give chase when we know he has crapped his underwear.  He taunts us with, "I pooped my pants!" and then runs away laughing like a madman.  So, needless to say, I did not want to miss this opportunity.

I remembered we had toilet tissues in the car for runny noses and went to grab it.  Then, as if God had ordained it, there were doggie waste bags hanging out of a dispenser 20 yards a way.  Do I sit him on a log or do I have him squat?  How do I contain the toxic waste that is about to flow if it will actually flow at all.  We ran to a corner of the park where there is an overflow of bushes.  He squats while I hold his hands and pray.  Two seconds later and he was done.  And this was a man's size poop too.  Not exactly solid so it would have been quite a cleanup.  But we were not out of the woods just yet.  I wiped him and pulled up his pants.  And then all three of us stood there looking down at this creation Fire had made.  Now here is where it gets interesting.  We don't have dogs so I have never used a doggie waste bag before.  The bag didn't have instructions and I didn't want to run back to the dispenser for fear the boys would get weird ideas in their heads about what to do with this......stuff.

"How could I not know" you say.  Well, it was a fancy one so it had a black piece at the end for better grabbing and, in my flustered state, I assumed you used that to grab from the outside rather than inside.  When you have two boys that have attention spans of gnats you don't always have time to think about your actions before you do them.  Because any mistake on my part is still better than any good idea they may have.  So I gingerly reach down and grab.  At this point every move I make is important.  Much like playing the board game "Operation" where the red light buzzes when you are a millimeter off target, I was avoiding poop on skin contact.  And I was successful!  This is where you burst into spontaneous applause.  Poop in garbage and onto the playground. 

But in my neurosis I couldn't shake the feeling that there was a small chance I wasn't successful.  This is where hand sanitizer is a good idea.  And washing my hands in the algae filled pond didn't seem like a good idea either.  So I licked my hands.  I'm kidding! 

I have to see a client now. Ta ta.