03 July 2008

The secret life of pee-pees

This is a little window into what we're dealing with these days now that D- is really feeling his four-ness:

D- (laying down, shortly after waking up, on the opposite side of our L-shaped couch from where I was laying): Daddy, can you make me something to eat? I'm hungry.

Me: You know what you gotta do first? Go to the bathroom.

D-: But you didn't see me grab my penis...

Just as I was about to say, "You don't need to grab your penis before you know you have to go to the bathroom," he continued.

D-: ...M- was in the way! (she was standing at the coffee table between us)

So what had promised to be the beginning of another theoretical discussion about when one needs to sit down and try to use the toilet, changed instead into a very practical expression of confusion regarding what seemed to be my x-ray vision.

Times like these make me wonder how the first man toilet trained himself before it stopped being widely accepted for men to be covered in their own urine? Because all indicators I've seen point to us not much caring either way without repeated, or possibly continuous, intervention.

The answer, I suspect, lies somewhere with the existence and manipulative skill of women. So thanks for that (I guess), ladies!

15 comments:

Mama Dawg said...

Yeah...see, we're good for something!

Anonymous said...

So he knows if you see him do that, he has to go to the bathroom and it still doesn't mean to him that he must need to go. He just wants to thwart your magical powers of somehow, some way knowing he needs to go to the bathroom. He's so very 4 and doesn't have to listen to you.

Anonymous said...

I guess it's a good thing I have girls b/c I'm not sure I'd know what to do with that. I will say though, if I were of the male persuasion, I think I'd prefer the manipulative skill of women over being covered in pee. lol

Kori said...

Yet one more parent talent, X-Ray visions-along with eyes in the back of the head and mind reading. My now 14 year old still does not know how I found out that he was spending his afternoons hangning out with a kid whose house he was not supposed to go to; neither can my daughter figure out how I knew she was kissing a guy in the park. I will never tell.

Rikki said...

I think I have to teach my son to call it a penis. Sounds so much better than him referring to it as a wiener.

Thanks LiteralDan!

Jenny said...

Your welcome. And you're a guy...you should know men have to grab their schwantz for EVERYTHING. Geez. You're totally lying to him! :)

Anonymous said...

This is just the sort of story that makes the parenting of teenagers bearable.

Pam said...

your welcome for all the good things woman help you men do LOL and lmao @ jenny's comment about men having to grab it for EVERYTHING LOL

TentCamper said...

OK...Now you are delving into my territoy. I am the pee guy!

But I do have to say that I still grab my penis when I have to pee...sometimes. Then again sometimes I just grab it cuz I am a guy.

Swirl Girl said...

I guess grabbing one's penis is the male equivalent of cupping one's va-jay-jay...as my girls do in very public places.

Oh- and the pretrained cave men were naked (or just a bit furry) so pee-soaked clothing was not an issue.

LiteralDan said...

Mama Dawg: Well, it's about time you all justified your existence.

Mary: Yes, he's very cause-and-effect about it.

Christy: Hey, it's not so bad. Don't knock it till you've tried it. Kids don't seem to mind it much. To-may-to, ur-i-no

Kori: I wouldn't dare to claim my skills are as advanced as that, but hopefully it comes with time.

Rikki: You're welcome. But "wiener" does have its charm, especially for a toddler. We just figured he has all the time in the world to learn as many of the thousands of euphemisms (and growing... no pun intended) for the aforementioned appendage.

Jenny: Like all men before him, he has to first learn the company line before he learns to break it, judiciously.

Middle Aged woman: I bet you have plenty of stories of your own to make the parenting of toddlers bearable-- luckily(?) we all get our turns with each lovely time of whiny high-maintenanceness.

ciara: Don't get too carried away, buddy

TentCamper: I grant you your dominion, but isn't there enough pee to go around? And I'm with the latter more than the former.

Swirl Girl: I'd say men have rights as the crotch-grabbing originators-- the cuppers are the copycats.

That's a fair point... I guess I was picturing winter time, with pelts keeping all the important bits warm. Ahh, how I long for such simple days...

small town city girl said...

Too cute! My 4yo has taken to finding me and pointing to either his penis or his bottom to let me know which he needs to do, then racing off to the bathroom. Boys are too funny!

LiteralDan said...

Hey at least he's communicating, and at least he's going to the bathroom. If it was mine, I'd have to tell him where he needed to go, then he'd run, trip on something, bonk his head really hard on something, and then wet himself.

Gotta love that kid!

SherE1 said...

Great, something ELSE I have to look forward to with my son. Boys are so strange.

LiteralDan said...

Hey, boys aren't strange! We are... ummmmm... unique? Or wait, no, we are strange, but strange is now the cool thing to be.

So there.

That's what you get when you are a helpless victim of the patriarchy. Sucker!!