The Pop-Pop Chronicles: "A Messy Situation"

 Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. 

-Stephen King, "The Shawshank Redemption"

So under her newest schedule, C-2b  works the day shift on weekends, and unless GC-2 and GC-4 are off with their fathers or their fathers' families, I get to play babysitter. On this particular weekend, GC-2 was with his father; that left the little one, GC-4, as my running buddy. So on Sunday, I got up and got us dressed for church. We were in preppy mode that morning, wearing matching button down shirts and khaki pants. In addition, I slid into a brand new pair of Ralph Lauren Polo canvas and leather shoes to complete the look. Nothing fancy, by any means, but pretty cool and comfortable:

So off to church we went,and we ended up enjoying a nice service. GC-4 was well-behaved, and several compliments on how good Pop Pop and Grandson looked were thrown our way (alright, alright, they were more for him than for me); a couple of people even noticed my new shoes and remarked how much they liked them.

After service was over, I switched into one of the many hats I wear at the church, in this case that of the Youth Choir Director. I held a quick rehearsal with the kids while GC-4 played with his Auntie and a couple of smaller kids. After that we all gathered to eat a little food left over from an affair at the church from the night before. While we were standing around eating and chatting, little GC-4 toddled up to me, hugged my legs...and GRUNTED...uh oh...any parent or grandparent knows that grunt; that means the little one is doing his business. Get ready for a diaper change. But then I looked down. OMG!!! That can't be? Is it? It is! I saw it, I realized what it was, then I said it...this little boy had liquid shit running out of the bottom of his pants legs!

And when I say "running", I mean it was running, flowing like molten lava out of both pants legs. As GC-4 clutched on to my legs, I looked down behind him; there were freshly formed stains the color of  French's spicy brown mustard formed along the outline of his diaper (that last grunt must have just blown the doors off that protective barrier the diaper is supposed to provide. Even better: behind and a little to the left of him was a seemingly-too-large-to-come-out-of-that-small-body-yet-somehow-expanding puddle, that had the same sickly mustard yellow color. I momentarily froze as I tried to figure out how to handle this scenario in the least nasty way possible...

I picked the little one up, holding him at first at arm's length, and headed off to grab his diaper bag. The poor little thing was in such distress, however, that I couldn't help put pull him close to me , even though he was still leaking, and that meant I was about to become a poopy mess as well. That's why they make washing machines, I guess. I grabbed the diaper bag, found a spot to lay him down to strip him down (We really need some changing tables in this church), and got down to business, with my mother standing by holding a plastic bag to drop the bio hazardous materials into. And after a few minutes of crying and squirming (and that was just from me), the deed was done: GC-4 was clean (well, as clean as he was going to get without a bath), dry, and in a new outfit, the contaminated stuff was bagged up, and I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. The deed was done - well, at least THAT deed was done. There was one little matter still to be attend to, which I was reminded of when I looked up and saw all these faces looking back at me with expressions that said, "Hey, Pop Pop, you gonna go clean that shit up now?"

DAMMIT!

 (Sorry, Lord, please forgive me...)

So I handed off the baby to my aunt, and stood up and looked down at my poop-stained shirt, pants leg, and - NO, NOT MY NEW SHOES! Sure enough, the little darling's entrails had dripped along the side of my right shoe. What else could go wrong? Well, they are canvas; I can wash the shoe or scrub it or something...I trudgedthe janitor's closet to grab a mop and bucket, and I found...neither...aye yi yi. This led to a mad, semi-panicky scramble around the basement: from the janitor's closet to the kitchen to the pantry, to the bathrooms, and back again, all in search of the missing mop and bucket. Finally, I gave up, and resigned myself to cleaning this mess up the old fashioned way, on my hands and knees. What the heck, I already had poop on me, right?

I grabbed a roll of paper towels, covered the mess and went to grab some bleach and a pair of rubber gloves. When I got back, the poop, in all its liquid glory, had mostly absorbed into the paper towels, so I scooped all of that up, wiped up the excess, and grabbed the bottle of bleach, drizzled it over the area I had just wiped up. And then I was reacquainted with a nice little lesson in Physics...

You see, if liquid falls and hits a smooth, dry, hard surface - like a floor - it's going to do what, class? That's right, it's going to splash. And when it splashes, the liquid tends to travel outward in a parabolic arcs, and if something - say a brand new pair of shoes - is in the path of those arcs, then what happens? That right, class, the liquid will get on whatever is in the path. And if that liquid is bleach, and your shoes are canvas, then what happens, class? That's right, the shoes get fucked up...very good, class, you all are so smart...smarter than the Angry Nerd, apparently...

So I left church a little while later, spotted with mustard colored pooped stains spattered on, and a pair of twice worn navy blue shoes that were now speckled pink from the bleach I used to clean up the mustard colored poop off the basement floor of my church. A couple of the teenagers tried to convince me that the shoes looked cool the way they were now; funny, no one wanted to try them on, however...Meanwhile, the 13 month old troublemaker who started all of this mess - pun intended - slept peaceably the rest of the afternoon, whilst his grandfather cleaned himself and their clothing, and threw out his formerly brand new shoes...