50 Ways to Say “Poop”: How I Got My Son to Go No. 2

When I was younger, so was my son.  And at that time in our lives, I found myself cajoling him to poop regularly.  

It was in his best interest to learn to drop the deuce, I insisted. You see, my mind’s brown eye recalled my own early youth, during which I was reluctant to take a dump as frequently as I should.  As a result, I sometimes became impacted with fecal matter, to the point where doctors told my mom to grease my turd ATM with Vaseline so that I would not damage my colon. This became a phobia for me. Sitting on the john for hours, being instructed to give birth to a food baby, but being unable due of the separation anxiety I felt towards my doo-doo.

If you are wondering why I have begun this article with the topic of defecation, stay tuned. I promise this is educational.  At the end you will admit that you have learned useful crap.

My childhood trauma of parental intervention each time I refused to take the Browns to the Superbowl was impressed upon my memory when at potty-training age my own son exhibited a reluctance to squeeze out a steamer.

“Buddy,” I said each evening. “You need to make a deposit so that you do not become sick.”

The next night: “Code brown, buddy. Go ride the porcelain bus and pinch a loaf.”

And the night after: “Hey bud. Good job eating your dinner. Now head down the hall and bust a grumpy.”

At this point, I started to realize that my wife was looking at me funny.  But that was ok. She didn’t understand.  Neither did Mom and Dad.  Nor did the neighbors or our priest.

It went on for weeks. Stock the lake with brown trout. Go see a man about a horse. While you’re at it, make some horse apples. Bake brownies. Blow mud. Free the turtles. Drop the kids off at the pool. Expel the hamster. Go number two. Pinch a loaf.

Many nights, he created dung.  On others, no stool could be found.  

In other words, sometimes it was a waste of time, and sometimes it was time to waste.

Other fathers and sons do cool things like rule the universe after overthrowing the Emperor (or not, as the case may be.) My son and I – we learned things together.

We learned how many things could be dropped!  Deuces, hot bombs, coils, the kids, trout, and wolf bait.  We learned how many things could be laid! Loaves, pipelines, rope, hot snakes, cable, or gorilla fingers.  Importantly, we learned that anything that could be dropped or laid could also be busted.

Together, we made the experience of taking food and converting it into caca a fun one, filled with hilarity and eye-rolling by our family members. But mostly hilarity. My son soon became potty-trained!*

*Okay, in truth, he did not become potty-trained because I turned him into a virtual thesaurus on all things feculent, but rather because I became so fed up with his reluctance to poo that I bribed him with money for each bowel movement.  Turns out, he is an extortionist and he had been holding out for cold hard cash. Whatever works is fair game when you are trying to train your offspring to scat like Ella Fitzgerald, or rather not like her at all.

Later in life, these lessons’ utility became apparent.  Just today, six years into the future from the past, we were hanging out at the park.  “Dad,” he said, “I need to go build a log cabin.”  

‘Proud me’ answered, “Son, go take care of that before you make a meadow muffin.” Upon his return from tidying his dingleberries, he looked chagrined.  “What’s the matter?” I asked, “Pebbles from heaven? Did you only get bunny pellets?”

“I have the burning Hershey squirts,” he said miserably.  I patted him on the shoulder and bought him some water and Pepto. He’s a good dude.

At this point, you may be asking, “What have I actually learned from this article?”  Well, I’ll tell you.  The easy answer is that you expanded your vocabulary—an activity that is worth aspiring to at any stage of life.  

I have shared approximately twenty different synonyms for excrement (whoops, that makes twenty one) and twenty nine verb substitutes for the act of producing a future coprolite for paleontologists to study.  And those only scratch the surface! There are literally hundreds—nay, hundreds and ones—of ways to communicate about doing the dirt! I encourage you to research on your own, to take this science onward!

More importantly, you learned that if you can’t potty-train your kid, try money.

But if you didn’t learn anything from this article?

Well…poop.