Guess Where I Peed

On the drive home from day care today, Gamble pipes up from the back seat: "Daddie? Guess where I peed today."

I don't know of any good conversation that ever started that way.

"Only in the toilet, I hope," I said, thinking back to the recent episodes of wanting to pee outdoors.

"No, Daddie. Christopher and I went to the bathroom and we peed..."

"Gamble, are you allowed in the pottie with anyone else at school?"

"No, we went in when Miss Jenny wasn't looking. And you know where we peed?"

I was beside myself at this point. It was like a frosted mini-wheats commercial. The adult in me knows this conversation is all business, but the giggling kid in me sees two four year-olds whizzing all over the bathroom and each other, which is probably what I would have done as a kid. I'm nearing breaking up. Luckily, he's in the back seat, and only sees my serious, dead-pan (I hope) eyes in the rearview. I didn't know what to do, Nic wasn't there, and I'm the last guy you want in this situation.

I did my best to adult one out of the park.

"Where did you pee?"

"We peed on the paper towels."

"Oh yeah? Where were they when you peed on them? Were they on the floor?"

"No."

"Where could they have been?"

"Well, we pulled them out, and we peed on them then put them away."

I'm horrified to say that I wasn't able to learn much more about the crime. He wasn't really able to articulate it, and I couldn't tease any more detail out.

I changed tactics, toeing the parental line equivalent to, but not nearly as tried as, "if Christopher jumped off a bridge..."

You know, I always wondered if there was any practical purpose to the whole "one person in the restroom at a time" thing. I thought it was maybe a prudish, puritanical heritage of dirty, dirty private parts. I now see why it's so practical.

Because little boys think this stuff is hilarious. That's why.