By Tom Lutzenberg

A friend of mine told me the other day that there was something worse than just dirty diapers.

Personally, I thought baby dirty diapers were pretty bad to begin with. And I’m not referring to the pee‐pee version. I’m talking about the ones that look like a transposition of the special effects team samples from Revenge of the Blob Slime.

As a father I’ve already seen some very nasty bio‐hazard spills, and I didn’t think there was much that could top that. What was even more shocking was that my daughter could produce something that revolting in the first place.

But my buddy was pretty adamant: nothing is worse than when your toddler daughter is being potty‐trained and poops in her underwear instead of a diaper.

First off I need to backtrack. In the modern age of climate change and being “green,” there’s a lot of proponents for recycling and reusing almost everything, including diapers. However, for us men, there’s no such thing as recycling diapers, period. You poop in the thing and it gets thrown away. That’s just off‐limits for re‐use in our minds. The concept of a re‐usable diaper was a bad curse created by a woman somewhere who figured she could always get her husband to wash the darn things, so no dirty work on her part, it was all conceptual. When diapers were finally invented (with the same water absorbing gel they use as fire retardant, didn’t you know) they were a godsend to men everywhere. The only hard work left was the cleanup of the baby bottom.

But of course your girls grow and become toddlers and it’s time to get out of diapers. Says who?

Well your wife of course, and thus begins the process of the dirty underwear. Ever tried to get crap out of cloth material? It’s horrible and the smell makes you want to throw‐up. Remember that special poop babies are supposed to get rid of after first being born? What did they call it? Myconeum or something similar? It’s like dealing with that stuff all over again. Oily, sticky, and this time royally stinky.

You would think someone would be smart enough to invent disposable underwear for toddlers, but I don’t think modern society is ready to go there. Something about kids never learning to get away from diapers would probably be the end result.

My daughter, on the other hand, thinks potty‐training is the funniest thing ever. Her little potty pot makes a great place to hide toys. And she likes to say she went “poo‐poo” when she didn’t, just because it gets a reaction out of us.

Then of course she won’t tell us when she really did have a bowel movement, stinking up the house room she happens to be in at the time.

Even the cat runs out of the room at the first smell of it.

What makes it worse is when I tell my daughter it’s time to change her diaper, and she runs away. All that leg‐flapping just acts like a repetitive air bellow, stinking up every room she runs through.

It takes about four hours for it to all dissipate. I once tried using the oven fan to clear the smell, but my wife just made a face at me.

I suspect at some point we will be successful with potty‐training. Hopefully in time before my daughter starts dating at 16. And I know I’ll have fun reminding her of all those wonderful bowel moments when she’s a teenager in front of her friends.

But for now it’s just, “DADDY, POO POO!”