In the middle of Thanksgiving dinner, my 2 year old surreptitiously left the room, went around the corner where she thought she was alone but where she was in fact in full view of everybody, squatted, and took a dump. Luckily she's still in diapers, or this story would have been completely different. My brother said, "That's so funny how she goes around the corner to do her business."
Actually, the online articles say, this is a sign that she is ready to be toilet trained. It's not the first sign she's shown, either. Others include announcing the need before she actually goes, giving me plenty of time to get her installed on a potty. We've had an Elmo potty for about 3 months now, but I've yet to break it out, despite the Signs.
Why, you ask? (Because I'm sure you're dying to know the details of my potty training theory) It's purely projection on my part but, frankly, if I had the ability to go whenever and wherever I needed or wanted to, I would be loathe to give up that freedom. The moment we potty train, we are slaves to the location of every bathroom on the planet. I am one of those people who has fairly high toilet standards, which makes it even worse. Not only do I need to make sure I remain close to a bathroom at all times, but it has to be a bathroom I consider worthy of my waste and delicate parts.
I pay a lot of attention to toilets, and I remember where the good ones are. The ones in Macy's on Fourth Avenue are lovely. Each stall has its own counter space, kind of a half-bath, and nice wooden full-length doors. The toilets at the Bellevue Mall are really nice too, very spacious, also with full-length doors. I was incredibly impressed by the toilets in the Chicago airport, which automatically apply a new seat liner for you by waving your hand before a sensor. I greatly admire any bathroom in which I do not have to touch anything. Auto flush, auto faucet, auto soap dispenser, auto seat cover installer all earn big points in my toilet book. If they could install doors that automatically open and close that would be awesome.
On the opposite end of the spectrum (is there a butt joke in there?) are toilets that embody my own personal hell. A hole in the ground with tread marks indicating where to place your feet as you squat over it - this is not acceptable. And common in Europe. Which means that when I travel there, I don't drink much. A stall with no doors is equally appalling. I won't do it. Going to the bathroom in front of someone is a recurring nightmare of mine.
Speaking of nightmares, that's another thing I don't want to subject my daughter to by potty training her. The Inaccessible Toilet Dream. Now I understand from some vague and spotty research I've done (i.e., mentioning to friends in passing conversation that I have them, and getting the "wow, you're even crazier than I thought" look) that this is not a nightmare that plagues everyone but it does plague my mother. So clearly, like a fear of bumpy things, it runs in the family on one of those DNA strands or something.
The Inaccessible Toilet Dream is one in which, for hours or weeks in dreamland-time, you search in vain for a toilet that is acceptable enough to pee in. The toilets you find, however, are either the ones that you'll find in real-life in Europe or the Middle East, or are two stories tall and you don't have a ladder, or someone sealed the opening over so that if you sat and did your business it would run all over you, or is set on a pedestal in the middle of Yankee Stadium so that in order to relieve yourself you will have to do so in front of thousands of people.
Now, the Inaccessible Toilet Dream actually serves a practical purpose, which is to prevent you from peeing in the bed. However, it would be a little more practical for my clever subconscious to just WAKE ME UP so I could use the bathroom and resume more pleasant dreams.
If I wore diapers, I'd just go. No wet bed, the brilliant science of modern diapers would wick away the moisture from my bottom, my dreams would remain untroubled, and I'd sleep happily on.
What kind of sadistic mother would take that away from her child?!
Also, I'm just too lazy to potty train her. Maybe her roommate in college can fill her in.
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