Guest Post: The Incident

Our first guest post come from Darren Pecoraro. If you would like to post please email us. 

The Incident

As a father of 2 young boys, I have seen and heard it all at least twice, but nothing will ever top the events of a day which we refer to in my home simply as “the fecal incident”. When I became a father, I believed steadfastly that I would treat each child the same, be fair, and try to be magnanimous in the way I handled all situations. When reality sinks in, all parents know that this is a virtual impossibility.

Several years prior to that Fecal Friday, We received a crib tent as a gift for our first child. For those unfamiliar, a crib tent is a mesh dome which attaches to the top of a crib, and prevents a determined child from climbing out. We were lucky in that our first son wasn’t a climber or a rabble-rouser for that matter. Our second son……well……Lets put it this way, not only did he use the crib tent left behind by his older brother, but proceeded to destroy that one plus 2 more. At $80.00 a pop (at that time), it was becoming expensive to contain the little son-of-a……..ahem…Andrew. As my wife and I struggled for solutions, I could almost hear aloud the laughter of my recently departed, beloved mother. She had informed me on more than one occasion of how I would indeed feel the wrath of karma, in the form of one of my children repaying me for the dubious deeds I had done as a toddler. I do have a hazy memory of a stolen box of devil dogs and a trail of evidence falling from my diaper as I made an attempt at a getaway. I tried to deny, deny, deny, but the trail of devil dogs left the jury unanimous. I still think I could have gotten away with it if only I………But I digress.

It soon became painfully obvious to my wife and I , that a mesh crib tent was just not enough to hold back a force of nature the likes of young Andrew. He would routinely escape, despite our many attempts to “enhance” the security of the tent with household items, shoelaces, duct tape, etc. We had grown accustomed to the sound of a loud thud (Andrew escaping from the crib), and then a feverish pitter-patter of feet (Andrew running down the hall), But nothing, and I do mean nothing could have prepared me for the aforementioned fecal nightmare.

     

I was sitting in our downstairs living room, watching television. It was a typical Friday, my wife was at work and Andrew was in his crib napping, or so I thought. The first indication things weren’t right was a faint, unpleasant odor, which intensified exponentially with each passing second. As I hurried up the stairs the smell grew ever stronger, but even as I reached the door, with the smell even more repugnant, nothing could have prepared me for the fecal carnage I was about to unleash on the unsuspecting world. I reluctantly opened the door and vaguely remember fainting on my feet for a millisecond, the next recollection is being punched in the face with the smell of fresh feces. Not a love tap,  mind you, but a Mike Tyson fecal hook, a Muhammad Ali fecal uppercut, and once again felt the urge to pass out. Gaining my composure for the second time in 5 seconds, I gasped in horror at the fecal blizzard which had befallen Andrew’s bedroom. A blizzard, with no trace of white anywhere to be found. My son had decided to redecorate his room with his freshly produced “medium”. He had decided it was a good idea to take his diaper off, and use its contents in a creative way.  It felt like I stood for hours deciding what to do, and finally opened some windows to try to think clearly. My first instinct was to chain him to a pole and power wash him ala Planet of the Apes, but I regained my senses just in time to put him in a bath. His room was another story. It was literally a shithouse. His cream colored carpet? Check. His sheets, blanket and pillow? Check. His crib tent? Mesh and fabric? Check. Crib rails covered in fecal fingerprints? Check. Andrews’s hair and fingernails? Double-check. It took me quite awhile to clean all this up as you can imagine. Thankfully the crib tent is machine-washable, which proved handy. After about 2 hours of fresh air and laundry, the smell had finally abated when I began the difficult task of convincing Andrew not to ever do this again. Reasoning with any toddler is tedious, but reasoning with Andrew is more futile than anything.

           

I wish I could tell you that this was the only time this happened, I really wish I could tell you that. But we don’t live in a dream world where everything is snow white crib tents and carpets, Fastened diapers, and reasonable toddlers. It turns out I had to start duct taping his diaper closed so he wouldn’t open it. Pretty ingenious no?  Guess what else I discovered?  It Turns out there is only a finite number of fecal incidents in each crib tent….go figure. So I’m on line at Baby’s R Us, crib tent under my arm, and the woman in front of me says “What is that noise? Do you hear that?” I turn to her and politely say “Ma’am, that is my dearly departed mother laughing her ass off in heaven.”

Darren Pecoraro is a 45 year old retired stay-at-home dad from Englishtown NJ. He enjoys all sports, especially golf, music, and writing. His greatest love is his wife, Adele, and their two boys, Christian, and Andrew.