It was autumn. Mother was grocery shopping, as she did on this and every other Sunday, so Father was ostensibly in charge of watching the boys; but in reality he was watching the football game, giving me (age four) and my brother Robert (age two) free roam of the house. Robert, at this young age, was walking and talking but still wearing diapers. I was occupying myself in the den when Robert tugged at my shirt.
"I pooted," he said. Been there, brother. Been there. Sitting in a moist pile of your own poo is no picnic. So I resolved to help him. I'd seen Mother and Father change diapers a hundred times before. How hard could it be?
I cheerfully led Robert by the hand past Father and into the downstairs bathroom. I myself had recently begun using the bathroom for my Big Boy Poops, and this seemed like the natural place for my inaugural diaper change.
Where to start? Step one is... let's see here... remove the pants, I guess? Robert shed his pants, tossed them in the tub. OK, that's progress. So far, so good. Parenting is totally easy!
But now what? He stood there innocently, waiting for my next move. Think, Maxwell, think! Instinct took over. I lunged at the diaper and yanked it down --- but nothing happened. Nuts! I yanked again, and still nothing. What's the deal here? I knelt down for a closer inspection. Oh, I see, here's the problem --- there's some tape holding the diaper around his waist. Let me just... tug a little here... right, that ought to do it.
The diaper, and its stupendous contents, spilled to the floor. Success! Time to dispose of the diaper. Poop goes in the toilet, right? Of course it does! I put the diaper in the toilet and flushed. That takes care of that. Piece of cake. You're a genius, Max! An absolute genius. I wouldn't be surprised to hear from Yale tomorrow.
But wait! There's poo all over the floor. Where's the toilet paper again? OK, found it... I'll be with you in just a second, Robert. I gotta clean up this mess... gosh, this doesn't seem to be working. If anything, I'm just smearing it around. Well, no biggie, I'll take care of that later. Let me just try to clean Robert up here... you know what? He doesn't seem to be getting any cleaner, either. If anything, he looks worse than the floor.
OK, change of plans. Let's forget about getting him clean. Let's just get him in a fresh diaper. Where do we keep the diapers again? Under the sink, right? So I checked --- and found nothing but extra toilet paper and some cleaning supplies. Oh no! I had no idea where the extra diapers were stored!
Panic set in. I imagine this is how the Apollo 13 astronauts felt when the oxygen tank ruptured. Houston, we have a problem. With a capital "P". And it stands for Poo. I'd made tactical error after tactical error. My battlefield intelligence was faulty. It was a hopeless quagmire. Abort! Abort!
About this time --- the game was on commercial, maybe? --- Father found us in the bathroom, alerted no doubt by some combination of the racket and the aroma. What he saw must have been horrifying: the toilet overflowing, clogged by a soiled, sopping diaper. Robert, naked from the waist down, generally covered in poo. As was I --- it was in our hands, in our hair, on our clothes. The floor? Smeared with poo. The cupboard beneath the sink? Also smeared with poo. Only the ceiling was spared (at least, I assume it was). It must have looked as if a terrorist had detonated the ultimate dirty bomb in our bathroom. It was a flood of poo. A poo-nami, if you will.
It's difficult to describe the range of expressions that swept across Father's face in the long, painful moments after the door had swung open. Terror? Nausea? Rage? Yes, all of that and more. OK, here it is: you're Brad Pitt, and you've just opened the box from Kevin Spacey that contains your wife's severed head.
That was the look on Father's face.
Mother came home shortly afterward. Frankly, their marriage was never the same.
