(Day 4 of COVID isolation in a caravan, July 2022)
Being confined to a caravan 24/7 gives you time to reflect. Receiving a piece of news from home during this time certainly gave me cause. The news came from Melody, my daughter. She said in an email…
Last Friday, I was picking up Rory from work with the kids in the car. We were half an hour early so I took Alvie for a milkshake from a McDonald’s drive-thru.
We were coming down Hindley Street back towards the city and Alvie exclaimed, “Oh Oooh. I spilled A LOT”.
I couldn’t pull over so I turned down the nearest side-street and looked back—he’s holding the milkshake cup’s lid in one hand and the tilted cup in the other, with a good two-thirds of the contents running down his front, pooling in his lap and spilling over the booster seat. At this point I say “JE..S!”, which Alvie repeated with uncharacteristic, perfect pronunciation.
I tried to clean up with wet-wipes but they didn’t make a dent in the pool of milk and ice cream, so I lifted him out of his seat without straightening him, so I could pour it from his crotch onto the road.
Then I changed his clothes on the footpath while office-workers parted around us as they rushed to catch their buses. OH BOY!
At about this point, Alvie said calmly, “Well I won’t do that again!”
On reading this, I couldn’t help but laugh-out-loud. It cheered me up.
Mel’s story also reminded me of an experience, much like this, when she was about Alvie’s age. Tell me if you can see the similarities.
The family; Mary, Tim, Mel and I; were travelling in the country. Mel, in nappies, was in a child’s seat in the back of the car. The nappies were the recently-invented, super-duper type—with stick-on side-tabs, loads of soak-it-up padding, a water-proof outer and expandable elastic rims that fitted the unit closely around a child’s legs.
At some stage in the journey, I suggested to Mary that a foul smell was coming from the back seat and I suspected poo. Mary glanced back and after a quick examination, reported that Melody’s nappies were “All-clear.” I was unconvinced and pulled over to check more thoroughly. I walked around the car to Melody’s door, opened it and leant in to make my own enquiry.
I was surprised to find that Mary was right, no mess. But the smell persisted, and so did I. I leant further into the car and pried open the elasticised trimming around Melody’s inner thigh, the likely problem area—where the brown business happens.
It seems that the combination of pressure from the tight-fitting child’s seat and the retentive properties of the nappy, meant that when the nappy’s edge was pried open, out came a projectile-style dose of diarrhoea.
There I was—in close, inquiry-based proximity and now dosed in a brown-wash. Arrgh!
So, what is left to be said about these two events?
How about, “What goes around, comes around.”
(An excerpt from https://travellingwithgullible.wordpress.com/ )
Burnside Writers Group 