Bye bye. Love you. Eat blue sheep poop." Sometimes it's different. Sometimes it's, "Bye bye. Love you. Orange alligator poop." Once it was, "Bye bye. Man, it smells like green racecar poop in here." Either way, ending a phone conversation with my nephew and Godson Eryk is a fantastic experience. He loves every animal's poop, everything's poop, every color poop and every combination thereof. And he's not afraid to announce it.
His obsession with poop (a poopsession, if you will) is by far his most endearing characteristic. Sure, he's talkative and friendly, too. Take, for example, this interaction he had with the manager of the Home Depot.
"Aren't you the cutest thing? How old are you?"
"Two. Geese poop."
"Oh, that's so sweet. What did Santa bring you for Christmas?"
"Just some reindeer poop."
"Reindeer poop? Did you just say reindeer poop?"
"You smell like pink forklift poop."
"What, exactly, does pink forklift poop smell like?" you may ask yourself. The answer, you'll note, is that it smells like forklift poop of any other color. Just as all forklifts smile in the same language, forklifts of every nationality, color and creed poop with the same discernable odor. And apparently, the manager of Home Depot has been spending too much time with pink forklifts. Or IS a pink forklift (with poor hygiene) in disguise!!! But I digress.
So far everyone in my family supports Eryk's ability to see the world through poop-tinted glasses. After all, he's young enough and hasn't been potty-trained yet. Poop is of the utmost importance in his life, and he can certainly get away with verbalizing this fascination with poop (or, poopscination). But, there will come a day when the potty-talk will have to end. One dreadful day, perhaps sooner than I would like to imagine, we will have to stop laughing at his poop-talk and start demanding that he responds to questions with answers that make some degree of sense.
I uneasily imagine having a phone conversation with my changed Godson. "Bye bye. Love you. Green pig," he'll say. I'll wait instinctively, hoping for him to "poop" in vain. Then I'll tell him I love him and hang up the phone. The sadness we'll feel will flush away any happy feelings we had during our conversation. I'll have sensed the anguish in his voice and know that he had the desire to say poop (a poopsire? No! Not now. Not any more. This is not the time for wordplay. I have a little boy on my hands who just wants to say "poop." And he can't.) That will be a sad day. A very sad day. And you know what; I'd rather not talk about it with you right now because, frankly, I don't much feel like crying ....
But, for heaven's sake, is it SO much to ask that little boys be allowed to continue to be obsessed with poop? So what if he'll be eight years old and still offending store owners? And who cares if he'll never have success with love because he insists that his date's lips will taste like purple dinosaur poop? After all, what is a socially graceful life without poop? Painful, that's what. So, come on, let the kid have his poop and talk about it, too.
