By Mark Hebert

One of the most beautiful things my daughter has said to me in the first five years of her life is:

“Daddy, I’ve got to go poop on the potty.”

Up until the point of that declaration my adorable little girl would let me know she had to drop a duce by tightening up her face and making a few grunts before taking a dump … her face contorting so that she looked like a little old Irish man, sort of like Mickey in Rocky, before scampering away from me and down the hall.

“You’re gonna eat lightnin’ and you’re gonna crap thunder,” I’d tell her as she skittered away with a pant-load of wet bacon bits.

There are a lot of fathers out there who refuse to change their kid’s diapers, who think it is beneath them to wipe their child’s ass and feel that doodie-duty should fall strictly to the their wife. I brought this up to my wife, she considered the idea and then told me something along the lines of “you don’t have to do it” and “I’ll just put these little extra clumps of flavor in your Frosted Flakes in the morning.”

It didn’t take me long to become a diaper-changing master, but there is at least one thing that fathers of daughters should know that aren’t common sense when it comes to cleaning that daughter of yours.

First, in medical terms, when wiping your daughter, do so from the top of the who-ha back towards the corn-hole. This is because it is much easier for a girl to suffer from bladder problems than a boy because of fecal matter getting into their privates. Front to back, always Front to back.

A good trick to keep in mind with the disposal of diapers is to have a good cache of plastic bags – the kind you get you groceries in at the store – on hand. Place a towel under your daughter before changing her, put both of her feet in your left hand, hold them up in the air so you get a good view of the area, clean her up – front to back – slipping the diaper out from under her buns like you’re pulling a cloth off of a table. Once she is free of the crap-bag, bind it into a tight little ball, secure it with the tape that’s already provided and then plunge it into the plastic bag. Tie the bag off at the top – making sure there is not air inside – and viola, the kid is clean and all areas are secure.

Keep the bag out of the house, but in a spot you can quickly locate. Wait until that annoying neighbor starts loudly playing his Michael Jackson Thriller album at 2 a.m., retrieve your dirty bomb and chuck it at the windshield of his car.

“The kid might not be yours,” I howl, Billie Jean style, “but the kid’s shit is going to be hell on your windshield wipers.”

See that, two asses taken care of with one stone.

When your daughter is dry, make sure to have some baby powder on hand for her little tookas. A light dusting with the powder gives your baby that new-infant smell (like buying a new car) and the comfort that the powder provides will be apparent as you look down at your little girl face and she grins back up at you … maybe if the world’s leader would powder each other’s butts once in awhile, there would be less war and suffering in the world.

Inset the new diaper under the kiddo, place the butt dead center and then fold her nether regions up like a burrito on Cinco de Mayo. Make sure that the tape on the diaper is not too tight, but at the same time not too loose … fresh baby poop shooting through your bare toes is no fun, so keep the perimeter secure, but don’t cut off circulation.

Dads, just remember that changing your daughter’s diapers will someday be repaid. Someday we will be crotchety old farts that don’t have the ability to drop the kids off at the pool and that we will be the ones wearing diapers. Someone is going to have to wipe our ass and who better to repay the favor then the little girl who crapped thunder all those years ago?

Diaper spelled backwards is “repaid,” keep that in mind daughter-o-mine, and daddy will be eating lots of bran in his diapered years.