Hi, Normal. Remember Me?

Parenthood should come with a warning label: Last chance to turn back. Life is about to change. Forever.

Yes, being a dad is pretty awesome…at times…when you’re not feeling useless because you can’t help your kid with her math homework, despite having the answers to odd numbered questions in the back of the book.

And whose bright idea was that? Why can’t the answers for both the odd and even numbered questions be in the back? I mean, aren’t we teaching our children to be quitters if they’re only able to do half of their math homework?

But I digress – which I find myself doing a lot of, as I’m sure many of you who regularly read this already know.

Fatherdom hasn’t come with any hard or fast rules.

Some days I’m totally absorbed in the kids, but there are often days that I’m totally absorbed in me. I guess the hardest part of teaching your kids about growing up is admitting that you haven’t really figured out how to do it yourself.

One particular aspect of raising children I really haven’t gotten down is potty-training. Kacie’s been good and potty-trained for some time now, so I can’t exactly remember how difficult or not it was with her, but Brady is definitely not Sunday morning. He’s been anything but easy.

The kid’s four. And-a-half. He’s great during the day, but somewhere in the early morning hours it’s like the animals on his pajama bottoms have to load up two-by-two and head for higher ground.

The worst part is the pooping. Take the other night for instance.

Traci and I are watching a movie. Fittingly Life as We Know It.

She comments that Brady has been in the bathroom longer than necessary for normal bathroom activities, and since he doesn’t yet have a magazine subscription she believes something’s up.

I leave the comfortability of my chair in front of the television to investigate.

Wasting no time with subtlety, I barge into the bathroom.

I expect to see him playing in the sink, making “donuts” with wads of toilet paper. I think maybe he’s fixing his hair, trying his best to be as good looking as Daddy. Perhaps he’s playing in Kacie’s makeup.

None of those things is happening. I wish any one of those three things would have been happening. He’s standing in front of the toilet, Spiderman underwear around his ankles, trying to wipe himself. Less than an inch from his right foot is a ball of poo.

“Brady, stop!” I yell, barking out orders like Major Dad.

“Go,” is all Brady can say. He’s embarrassed and won’t make eye contact. I don’t blame him.

“It’s okay, son. Just stop and let me finish – you’re about to step in poop.” It’s bad enough wiping someone else’s behind, but cleaning poop from their foot? Pass.

“No, you’re stepping in poop,” he says, not breaking focus from cleaning himself.

He gets smart-alleck like this sometimes. Who’s to say where my son gets it from, but I know enough to confidently say that I am not stepping in poop. I’ve checked, and the rogue turd is a good six inches from me.

Brady loses his balance and is forced to shift to the right. Again he nearly misses stepping in doo. Again I warn him to be still so I can help.

“NO,” he insists, “you’re stepping in poop.”

“Brady, I am not stepping in poop.”

“Yes you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes you are.” The argumentative thing I’m certain he gets from his mom.

“I’m not standing in –”

He points to the ground, beneath my left foot.

“- poop. I’m standing in poop?”

“Told ya,” he says in a sing-song kind of way.

Footsteps – a stampede of footsteps to be more precise – pound the floor of our tiny apartment like the sound of thundering hooves beating down the deserted plains. I feel like I’m on the set of Dances with Wolves. Tatonka! Tatonka!

I look away. Quickly. I want to throw up.

The girls loiter in the hallway, neither of them of any use because neither of them wants any part of being me at the moment. Instead they watch, like rubbernecking vampires waiting for a formal invitation to come inside.

“Get it off. Get it off! Get it off!!” There. Invitation sent. Get in here and help. Please?

I stick my foot in the toilet, hoping the turd will lose interest and just fall off. Nothing. I will it to drop off. Still nothing. Fail.

Doing a sorry imitation of a peg-legged hip-hop routine, I dance around on my right foot, shaking the left one desperately in the toilet bowl, hoping to dislodge the parasite. Like a random chewed up piece of bubble gum that searched out an entire parking lot of possibilities until finding your favorite pair of tennis shoes, it’s stuck and has no intentions coming off.

“I’m serious,” I say, grabbing hold of the sink for some kind of support seeing as how I’m getting very little elsewhere. The twelve-by-seven room closes in on me. I really want to throw up.

More laughter. It’s really not that funny. But seriously, you should come join the party and help your daddy.

Kacie backs up, distancing herself from the hilarity of a poop patty being stuck to her father’s bare foot. Just when I need her most, she pulls a Switzerland in the Sovereign Nation of Dad’s coup d’état against her brother’s poo. I’ll remember that the next time she wants to do anything that sounds remotely fun.

Traci finally musters the courage to enter, turning her head in such a manner to avoid direct eye contact with my foot’s new friend and the stench which is sure to cause a gag reflex or two of her own.

She grabs for the flushable wipes from the top of the toilet tank, but instead of cleaning my foot, cleans the skidmarks from the side of the toilet.

“Hey. My foot? You know, the one with the poop putting inappropriate moves on it? How about we give my foot a Line Hopper Pass so it’s next. Okay?” No, honey, I don’t mind taking a back seat to the toilet. Thanks.

Afraid of being asked to participate in the eviction process underway in her bathroom, Kacie pins herself against the hallway wall, almost as if she pushes hard enough the wall will spin around like in Scooby-Doo and she’ll magically appear in the other room. Perhaps she’s on to something. Maybe if I flush the toilet I’ll be sucked in and transported back to five minutes ago when life was normal.

But that’s just it. Parenthood is anything but normal. It’s hard. Crazy. Frustrating. Sometimes a little icky. There are moments that absolutely break your heart and others that make you wish for a time machine so you can do them again and again and again. And just when you think you’ve seen everything, parenthood throws yet another curveball that you hope to somehow get a piece of just to keep the at-bat alive.

Hello. My name is Brad Daddy, and I’ve long since forgotten what normal feels like.

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