In my last post, I listed ten random items I find in random places. I left number ten off as a shameless gimmick to get you to read this post. I could have simply listed this last item as a bullet point on that post, but the story is worth telling. All names have been changed to protect the identities of the crazy people involved in this tale, except mine because that would get way too confusing for me.
It was a regular day. I was talking on the phone to my friend Hilga as I ventured through each of my boys' rooms to gather dirty clothes for another cycle of laundry. As I made my way toward Ashton's room, a horrid smell hit me.
"Oh my goooooodness," I exclaimed. "It smells like something died in Ashton's room."
Hilga laughed, knowing that Ashton was always creating something. "I can only imagine what concoction he has made this time."
"Stay on the phone with me," I told her, "in case I find a dead body or I pass out from whatever it is."
Hilga kept laughing, probably thanking God it wasn't her son's room. I told her it was coming from under his bed. I was sure I would find a dead animal. The suspense was killing both of us, but I'm pretty sure it was killing me more because my sense of smell had already been violated.
I lifted Ashton's dust ruffle slowly as I knelt down to get a look under the bed. I didn't see any dead animals. Only a few Matchbox cars, Thomas trains, books and a clear rubbermaid container about the size of a shoebox.
"I don't see anything, but the smell is overpowering. It has to be something under here," I said as I started to pull the rubbermaid container out from under the bed.
That is when I screamed.
"What is it?" Hilga asked.
"Oh my gosh!"
"What? What?"
"It's poop. And pee! Someone has gone to the bathroom in this container and just shoved it under the bed. This is so disgusting."
At this point, Hilga was laughing hysterically, again thanking God it wasn't in her house, wafting up her nose.
"Just wait until Ashton gets home. We are going to have a looong talk," I told Hilga. I promised her I would call her after I talked to him as she was dying to hear his reason for having a box of poop and pee under his bed.
Fast forward a couple hours. When Ashton got home from school, I sat him down and said, "Would you like to tell me WHY there was a box of poop and pee under your bed, Ashton?"
He barely looked at me, not because he was ashamed or embarrassed but because it was of such little consequence to him. "Oh yeah," he said, "Jake did that."
"Jake? But why?"
"I don't know. I guess he didn't want to go down the hall to use the bathroom," Ashton explained, as if he was telling me why Jake wanted to do his homework with a pen rather than a pencil.
I dialed Hilga's number.
"Did you ask him," she said without saying hello.
"I did."
"And?"
"And it was YOUR son that pooped in Ashton's box and put it under his bed."
"No! Are you serious?" Now she was really laughing. "Is that what Ashton said? Oh my gosh, I'll talk to him right when he gets off the bus."
So she did. She asked Jake if he had pooped in the box in Ashton's room.
"Yep," he said, "And peed, too."
"But why?" Hilga asked, as I had so often asked my boys when trying to figure out a boy's mentality in my girly mind.
"Because I wanted to." And with that Jake ran to play with the neighbor boy.
When she called to report the dialogue and told me, he too, did not seem to think it was a big deal, I asked her if perhaps we should call her neighbor to warn her not to let the boys play unattended for long. We laughed to ourselves and decided we would let the neighbors and our other friends with boys figure all this out on their own. After all, if nothing else, poop makes for a really funny, albiet disgusting, story.