Guaranteed To Make You Wince

Note: The following entry is rated PG-13 due to violence and adult themes. Readers discretion is advised.

I might lose my blogging priviliges as a result of this post...but Elijah mentioned this today, and Robin suggested it might make a good blog entry. And since she NEVER reads my blog, the fact that she actually mentioned my blog thrilled me. So hear it goes!

When I took this job at ACU, Robin, Elijah and Noah stayed behind in Howe to sell our house. Well...we sold our house quicker than we thought we would...and we hadn't yet found a house in Abilene. So we were forced to take drastic measures...and we moved into the University Park Apartments (a.k.a. "UP") on the ACU campus.

For those of you not familiar with these apartments they are TINY!!! There's barely enough room for a single person to maneuver around in them...much less a Mommy, a Daddy, a soon-to-be-three year old, and a curious 8-month old.

But we managed. And Elijah still fondly remembers the three months we spent living there. Mostly because it was a great place to trick-or-treat during Halloween...AND there was always a college student or two that would kick the soccer ball back and forth to him.

However, it was also the scene of his most traumatic experience in the 5-1/2 years that he has walked upon this earth.

At the time we moved to Abilene Elijah was finishing the potty-training experience. Truth be told, he was an absolute breeze to potty-train...and to this date has still not had one single accident (I attribute that to my being married to one of the best mothers in history!). And early on he insisted on doing everything by himself...to which his mother and I HAPPILY agreed.

One nice thing about living in UP was that I could walk to work. So I woke up one morning, spent some time in our cramped quarters with my family, then began my journey across campus to my office. About the time I reached the door to my office my cell phone rang. Before I could say "hello" I heard a cry like I had never heard before on the other end of the phone.

"Oh Daddy," came Robin's pitiful voice, "we've had a terrible accident. Elijah needs to talk to you."

I wasn't too concerned...as the tone in Robin's voice caused me to think that Elijah had lost a toy or had his first potty-training accident. But NOTHING could prepare me for the story I was about to hear.

"DADDY!!!!" came the voice of my screaming child on the other end of the phone. "I go potty and.....WHAAAAAA!!!!!!" Elijah dropped the phone, and I waited patiently for either he or his mother to pick up the phone to tell me what was going on.

After a few seconds Robin retrieved the phone with Elijah still wailing in the background.

"What is that all about," I asked?

Robin, starting to giggle slightly, began to explain. "Elijah wanted to tee-tee by himself this morning. So I let him."

Her giggle has now turned into a laugh.

"Okay," I said. "So why is he crying while you're laughing?"

"Well," she continued, "he was in there by himself using the potty. Then I heard the lid close...and that's when he started crying." She was still trying to hold in her laughter as I came to the horrific realization of what had happened.

Yes...the toilet had attacked my son.

While Robin is giggling uncontrollably, I, on the other hand, found this to be no laughing matter. Instead, I had turned loose of the phone and, empathizing with my first-born, was protecting myself from suffering the fate that had befallen him. My face began to contort and grimace as I pictured, in slow motion (and in technicolor!) what had transpired. I began to envision years of surgery, therapy and other procedures necessary to help a young man through a harrowing, traumatizing experience.

I then thought of what neighbors, friends, and family would say. I thought of myself walking across campus amidst the stares of students, faculty and staff. Oh, how they would shake their heads, point their condemning fingers, and say, "There he goes. He's the man that was so insensitive as to allow his son to be attacked my a toilet. And his poor son - he'll never be the same."

Oh...the shame and scorn I had brought upon the family.

I was jolted back to reality by my wife's resumed giggling.

"How can you laugh about this," I screamed into the phone! "You are heartless!" I then went into a diatribe attempting to rival this pain with that of childbirth...but I don't think I made a very convincing argument.

I quickly ran home to console my son seeing that his mother's rabid insensitivity was making things worse. I hit the door and Elijah was still crying. He was naked and curled up on the floor...with a bag of ice resting on his "area."

"Let Daddy see," I said calmly. But in reality I didn't WANT to see. I would compare it to watching a Friday the 13th movie when you know that someone is about to catch an axe in the forehead...and you cover your eyes with your hands, yet you spread the ring finger and pinkie apart far enough to see...because you rationalize that if you look at it in this fashion it won't be near as gross.

Well...I'll spare both of you the details...but it was obvious that Elijah's manhood (or boyhood as the case may be) had suffered severe blunt force trauma. He managed to waddle to the couch like a Cowboy who had ridden the Log Ride at Six Flags one too many times and continued to apply his ice treatment. His mother, finally penitent of her insensitivity, brought him a popsicle and turned on Bear In The Big Blue House. So things in the house began to return to normal.

Although...I must admit that I walked to work a little slower and awkwardly that day. And Elijah still stands a little farther away from the toilet than we'd like.

But wouldn't you???