The Case of the Baby Teeth Indented Poop Balls

I stepped in dog poop while taking a stroll with the kids this morning. I was barefoot. Lucky me. I win big prizes.

"Ear muffs, kids. NOW!" I shouted in disgust, signaling for my oogling chitlins to clasp their hands over their innocent mostly selective listening ears. Insert a Turrets Syndrome like firestorm of uncontrollable choice f-bomb expletives. "G-damn, m-f-ers can't even pick up after their stupid dogs. Now look at my feet." (Do I also win the bad influence cussing mom award, I wonder?)

"Mom, ya 'got poo on you fees?" my curious two-year-old daughter asked between long suck-drags on her favorite thumb. "Look at this mustard colored poop streak! Of course it's poop, now hurry! Scoot! Hurry back home so I can clean it off!"

I hopped down the sidewalk on one foot in order to avoid driving the canine crap further into the dry cracks in my calloused heel. My neighbors could think two things: 1) Yes. That bitch is as crazy as she looks. Confirmation complete. 2) Wow. What a fun, involved mother who plays so animately with her lovely children. I'm banking on option number one. How about you?

The kids chortled like happy little elves, following close behind their fecal frowning Pied Poopy Piper. There goes mommy full of shame-tail, hoppin' down the bunny trail, dog poop and all.

"You stink like dog poop, mama!" my Moody Cheeks McGee, 3, squawked, covering his upturned mouth with his cupped hand for added ridicule effect. "Mommy is a poopy girl! Mommy is a poopy girl! Dog poopy mommy! You're a poo poo head!"

Apparently "poop," and especially "dog poop," rank right alongside the word "underwear" with the whippersnappers.

(Thankfully it takes a lot more than poop comedy to crack a jaded adult like me up. Um, yeah. Two words: Chappelle's Show. Let's add another two or so words to that: Dave Chappelle as Rick James. Now that's sophisticated adult entertainment light years above childish poop gags. Sure. It's right up there with Chappelle's hilarious "Pee On You" R. Kelly sattire. Of course, I would never, ever laugh at such base potty humor, now would I?)

Back to my woeful tales of malodorous "number two" ... Now both kids (my eldest was in kindergarten at the time, or this would read "all three kids") chime in for a melodious dog pooh duo, chanting, "Doggy doo on you! Doggy do on you!" (think "doom on you" from the watermelon hoarding dodo birds in Ice Age I) pointing at their flush faced, poop smeared madre.

As I hosed off my soiled foot with the always outstretched across the lawn in an acutely white trash fashion (along with the rusty BMX bikes and Big Wheels strewn this way and that in the driveway), I thought back to the time I busted one of my sons, I'm not telling who so he'll still talk to me, DINING ON HIS OWN POOP.

He was just two at the time. It was one of those episodes when the house suddenly fell silent. Too silent. You moms know what speak of. The dreaded pin-drop brand of quiet that signals only one thing: trouble. Yep, the type of deafening silence that says, "Your numb skull kid is testing his palate on a generous culinary sampling of the footnotes from his own bum." So maybe not all of you have experienced what I'm talking about, and I figure that's probably a good thing. Just play along.

So I search the apartment (this was before we bought a house full of closets) for my suspiciously quiet mini marauder. Luckily, I don't yet notice that it stinks like someone "dropped the kids off at the pool," make that someone dropped them off in his Pull-up, then impishly dumped the dump on his bed quilt.

When I found my two-foot offender, he wore the tell-tale shameful look of guilt.

"Where's your Pull-up?" I asked, just as curious about the product of his back-end as he apparently was a the time.

"Ober dere," he matter of factly answered, pointing beneath his pillow, where he had purposely stuffed away the evidence. Sure enough, there his Pull-up was. But it was empty. Something was definitely rotten in Denmark because the room stunk like a full-grown man had just cracked the porcelain in the aftermath of an authentic Mexican triple jalapeno salsa blowout. Sorry to sneak a barf bag alert on you like that. How cheap and inconsiderate of me to toy with your stomach, but I've got to channel my post-poop-traumatic-stress disorder (PPTSD) somewhere, right?

"Okay, so we've located the Pull-up. Now where's the poop? You pooped, right, honey? Give up the poop! Do you even know where your poop is?"

He nodded a guilt dripping "yes" and averted his frown to the Go Fish playing card scattered carpet below.

"Then where is it? Where's your poop?"

"I dunno."

I scanned the room as if routinely looking for the missing half of a pair of socks, but this was weirder because the object of my search was not something I'd unthinkingly pick up with my bare hands, and could technically make me even sicker than a putrid sock.

Apparently my poop-adventurer 2-year-old son wasn't above picking up his own excrement with his bare paws.

When I came up dusty and frustrated from sweeping my hands beneath his trundle bed, there he was, pinching a hard poop ball between his thumb and index finger.

"I foun' it," he said with toddler pride. "De rest is unner my covers."

"I hope there's a laundry room washer available PRONTO!" I thought to myself in a panic. This was before I became a mother of three, mind you, and I was still a touch of a germ-a-phobe. Now I could care if they eat food off the floor, even when the two-second rule is beyond past due.

"Do we even have any detergent? Wait. What if this requires bleach? This is so much worse than a skid mark! I'm calling your father." (This was back at the time when I used to freak out and call my husband whenever the mildest, most mundane child anti-drama unfurled, from a simple scraped knee to an up the back breastmilk diaper blowout, as if he could snap his exceedingly paternal fingers at the office miles away and make my troubles disappear as fast as my new mom memory.)

I turned over the ugly tassle fringed end of my poop-player's celestial themed bedspread. There, fully illuminated in the afternoon sunshine beaming in from the windows, lay the evidence. Two rabbit poop looking orbs the size of peanut M&Ms, both indented by two curious front baby teeth.

I peered at my son and asked him to open his mouth. Sure enough, his two front teeth bore the caramel colored stains of guilt.

"No offense, kiddo," I said between gut laughs, "but your breath really smells like crap!"

How ironic that while rapping out this post on the keyboard, my other son has come to me naked from the bathroom, wearing only two suspect poop smears on his feet and clutching a dripping toilet brush.

Don't even get me started on the time my sister painted our 1970s bathroom wallpaper with her own pooh when we were kids.

It's one o'clock. Do you know where your kid's Pull-up is? While you double check that it's still on, I'll be busy drawing a detoxifying bath for my most recent poop trooper. I'll also be pondering the mind boggling probability of both of us sporting excrement on our bare feet in the same crappy day.