Crap Karma

I have been wanting to write this post for a while.

I'll start with some background on my dad. Billy has an incredibly sensitive gag reflex. Swallowing pills, the sound of a baby pooping, the smell of baby poop, the smell of his own poop, the smell of garbage, the sight of a dirty diaper, watching someone vomit, the smell of vomit, the sound of someone vomiting, someone's nasty fart, his own nasty farts, the garbage bin on a hot summer day, the compost pile, all of these things induce dry heaving in my father. This reaction is 100% psychological. And to this day, even after having four children, he maintains that he has never changed a poopy diaper. My mother also adds that he didn't change any diapers of any kind, pee or poop.

Everyone knows that babies poop in the bath. It's like a right of passage for parenthood. They get all warm and cozy in the water and their little sphincters relax and WHAMMO! They let it rip. Even toddlers do it, traumatizing their older siblings with floating kernels of corn.

So one evening when my parents came to visit at Thanksgiving my mom and I were hanging out in the kitchen making hot pepper jelly. We thought it would be nice if Granddad bathed Jack before bed. Total hilarity ensued when, sure enough, for the first time ever, Jack lets a hot and steamy go in the bathwater.

Laughing, we stumbled into the bathroom to find my father kneeled over next to the tub, unable to even look at the now brown tub water or Jack's content grin. Blindly, one hand remained on Jack's chest, as if to prevent him from drowning in the two inches of sewer water. The fear of abandonment overriding his ingrained fight or flight response. In between retching he was cursing us for our undisguised joy.

After letting him have a breather, we cleaned out the tub, put fresh water in and set my father back at the task of Jack's bath, thinking it was no big deal. And I shit you not, no less than a minute later we rush back to the sound of my father's cries, "He did it again!". This happened a total of THREE times. Talk about Crap Karma. By the third time we didn't believe him, tears streaming down our faces from elation as my father threw up his hands in defeat.

Take that Billy.