Diaper

Poor Jade Jensen. She's a senior in high school now, and I'm an English as a second language teacher at the same school. I hope that she's not too embarrassed as I expose the torture we went through all those years ago. It's been 15 blessed years without diapers for me, and Jade is blessed with only knowing the details of this story because it is one that never dies.

She was an extraordinary baby, full of sass and personality and the stinkiest poop you could imagine. Much to my dismay, her parents, Darren and Julie, had left me with their daughter and her diapers and no back-up. It is a wound that has never healed for me.

You see, when you're a teenage boy, ignoring a rancid diaper with hopes that Momma will come home and rescue you from it sounds like a good idea. However, when you know Momma ain't coming home for hours, waiting on a rancid diaper is never a good idea.

As if the stench wasn't bad enough, it was a matter of time before little brown droplets began forming around the elastic edge where the diaper meets the leg. I now had to act. In the middle of the living room floor so I'd have plenty of room to work, I spread a blanket, three bath towels, the powder, the wipes, extra diapers and my dignity.

The smell had me dry-heaving already, but once the diaper tape was removed and I saw how much poop we were talking about, with one frightful convulsion, I lost it all. I vomitted on the light blue living room carpet. I blew chunks on the blanket and towels. I threw up in a path around the sofa. I ralphed down the hall. I drooled the mess in a long line up to the base of the toilet, and then I was done. I'd just puked everywhere in the house except the toilet.

After a few pensive seconds, I thought of baby Jade getting up and walking diaperless and dripping through the house. The horror of that thought scared me right off the bathroom floor. In a blur I thankfully can't remember, I managed to wipe her down, powder her up, and make that new diaper cover her bottom.

Poor Jade was still crying two hours later when Julie walked through the door, and poor me, I was still scrubbing light blue carpet. I swore I'd never change another dirty diaper again!

Oh, but wait, there's more.

Besides the lesson of not waiting on a dirty diaper to clean itself, I learned the lesson that if you're already gagging at the thought of changing a diaper, you should set up your office in the bathroom. And lesson number three is never swear off dirty jobs.

So in a second inevitable nightmare not too long after the first escapade, I found myself alone with Jade and another muddy diaper.

This time, it was Jade who waited. She hid in her room, postponing and crying big alligator tears. From my living room seat in front of my video game, I saw her terrified, little face peeking around the corner from the hallway at me. My heart sank.

She didn't want it any more than I did, but she was all too aware of the streaky, brown lines running down her short legs onto the light blue carpet. Oh, how I longed for droplets on the elastic!

One deep breath (that I held), and I was up and carrying Jade with my arms straight out. She kicked the curtain as I pushed her through it and into the bathtub. With the faucet on, the tub was filling with warm, tea-colored water. The diaper slid off, and I gasped, twisted, and lost my lunch into the toilet. Thank goodness I was close.

Poor Jade knew it wasn't going to be easy when she inched down the hallway to get my attention, but here I was going through hell with her again and swearing that "I'd never change another diaper again" again.

So I dry heaved as I swirled a chocolate-covered baby in a tub full of bathwater. And I convulsed as I wiped little brown floaties off my forearms and off the tub once the water was drained. I thought about leaving the brown footprint on the shower curtain because it was so cute or maybe because I was tired of my body trying to rid itself of food that wasn't there.

Jade was still crying when Julie came home, and once again I was still scrubbing light blue carpet from everywhere she had stepped, touched, or sat down before she worked up enough courage to have me change her diaper.

So now, as I ponder the beginning of June, seven months away, when our first baby's due, I feel proud of my wife, Ashley, and happy to be a father. But back there in the recesses of my thoughts and feelings, there's something tormenting me that just won't let go. I know the day will come when that cute, little poo-factory now in Ashley's womb will peek around the corner at Dad and surrender a stinky secret that only a diaper change can remedy.

And I'll have to call Jade.



Written by: Noah Huntsman
October 27, 2008

Will Allen Dromgoole

The Bridge Builder

An old man, going a lone highway,

Came, at the evening, cold and gray,

To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,

Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;

The sullen stream had no fears for him;

But he turned, when safe on the other side,

And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim, near,

"You are wasting strength with building here;

Your journey will end with the ending day;

You never again must pass this way;

You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide

-Why build you a bridge at the eventide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head:

"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,

"There followeth after me today,

A youth, whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm, that has been naught to me,

To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.

He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;

Good friend, I am building the bridge for him."

(from storybin.com)

A.E. Housman

To an Athlete Dying Young

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows,
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

(from bartleby.com)