My Mum and Dad tell a wonderful story about waking up one morning, when Simon and I were two, to the delightful sound of children’s laughter from the next room. They lay in bed listening to our shrieks and chuckles until eventually deciding to peep in and see what was causing such enjoyment. What they found was each of us standing over a full potty, gleefully flinging handfuls of poo at each other. There was poo everywhere: on us, on the carpet, on the walls, on the curtains.
How I’ve laughed every time I’ve heard that story! Ha ha ha! Imagine that! Poo everywhere! Ha ha ha! I even mentioned it in my best man’s speech at Simon’s wedding. How everyone laughed! Ha ha ha!
Fast forward 28 years (a phrase I’ll be using a lot in this blog). Hannah and Lauren were about 18 months old. I got a phone call at work from my wife Nicola at around half past three. “How soon can you get home?” she asked urgently. I offered a guess that I could leave by five. She said, “Just get here as soon as you can. It’s Poo-ageddon.”
I left work immediately.
When I got home, the house was eerily calm. I noticed a draught coming in through the kitchen and went to investigate. The back door was open, but there was nobody outside: just two dripping wet highchairs and the hosepipe hanging from the outside tap. Coming back indoors I noticed a strong smell of disinfectant in the kitchen and dining room.
I finally found them all in the bathroom: girls in the bath, Nicola wearing apron and rubber gloves, and with a smear of something across her forehead that, under the circumstances, encouraged me to keep my distance. It turned out that by a terrible stroke of fate, both girls had simultaneously suffered from a nasty bout of diarrhoea whilst wearing ill-fitting nappies. By the time I’d arrived home, the results had been efficiently eliminated from the girls’ clothes, hair and eyelids, the highchairs, the floor, the table and the walls. Nicola was just about coming round to seeing the funny side.
All in all I count this one as a lucky escape for me from the demons of my pre-school past, but if Nicola has to cope with too many of these on her own it can only lead to an unhealthy blame culture. Let’s face it: it’s my fault. They threw poo because I threw poo, and someone decided I had to pay. Simple as that.