“Just take this in there and scoop the poop out of the diaper with the spoon provided.”
“Excuse me?” I said utterly bewildered with newness to daddy-hood.
Maybe I should back up a little bit. I know that I’m still very new to this being a parent thing, hell, our daughter is three months old but what this day held in store for me I didn’t sign up for when I agreed to impregnate my wife.
Earlier this morning my wife and I took our daughter to the doctors. I’ve never been a fan of doctors (what man really is?) but I like our daughter’s pediatrician.
“Hey guys, what’s going on today?” Dr. Sloan asked. As doctors do.
“Well,” my wife took control of the situation. As wives do. “Her poops have been smelling like ammonia for the past two days and we’re concerned.”
When she says “we’re concerned” she really means “she’s concerned”. I’m more old school and kept saying, “Whatever she’s got she’ll shit it out.”
“Does she have a fever?” Dr. Sloan asked.
“No.” My wife answered.
“How about a loss of appetite?”
“No.”
“Has she been fussy?”
“Nope.”
This is where I wanted to say, “See, for once, I’m right.” But as always, I wasn’t.
“Well, I’m going to write you a prescription.”
“For what?” I thought to myself. Didn’t my wife just say that our kids fine other than her poop smelling like ammonia? Well, it turns out that you need a prescription to have specialist examine your child’s stool sample. Only in America.
Scribbling on her note pad she said, “When she has her next stool sample, keep the diaper and take it to this address.” She tore the paper from her doctor notepad and handed it to us.
So I did as I was instructed. The next time baby pooped, I put the evidence into a gallon sized zip lock bag and took it to the laboratory. While signing in they place a large sandwich size zip lock bag in front of me. On it, in huge black bold capital letters read the word “BIOHAZARD”.
“Here you go.” I said, while attempting to hand them my zip lock bag full of soiled diaper.
“Ha, ha, ha…no Mr. Lassen. You have to transfer the sample from the diaper into a plastic cup. Just take this in there and scoop the poop out of the diaper with the spoon provided.”
“Excuse me?” I said utterly bewildered with newness to daddy-hood.
“Here are some plastic gloves for you. Bathrooms right there to your left.”
I felt dirty.
I thought to myself, “Let me get this straight. You want me to go and scrape the poop out of my daughter’s hour’s old dirty diaper with a spoon and put it in a plastic cup?” I know times are tough in this current economy but who knew that the first to be let go from laboratories were the “dirty diaper shit scrapers.”
“Make sure to get as much as you can. I find that it’s sometimes better to use the cup itself to scoop up the sample rather then use the spoon.”
I rolled up my sleeves, looked them all in the eyes, “That sounded like a challenge. And I accept you challenge.” I grabbed my bags and made my way to the bathroom. I strategically placed all the items in front of me in order of their use from left to right. First up, the green plastic gloves, so that the shit sample doesn’t get contaminated. It’s odd when the priority is to not get shit on your hands for the shits sake. “Shit getting contaminated.” It just made me laugh. All of us men are really 12 year old boys at heart and I’m no exception. Juvenile moment over, back to work.
I struggled slipping the tiny green glove over my big paw that I call a left hand.
“RRRRIIIIIPPPPPPP!”
Fuck.
I popped my head out of the bathroom door. “Excuse me. Can I get another glove?”
They all laughed and I was handed another green glove.
Maybe it’ll go on easier if I place it on my hand as far as it go, blow into it and it’ll inflate it?
“POP!”
Nope.
Before I could open the bathroom door to ask for yet, another green glove, there was a knock at the door.
“Occupied.” I said prying the broken glove off my hand.
“Mr. Lassen, it sounded to us out here like you are in need of another glove.”
I opened the door and the nice man laughing handed me another green glove.
After some careful struggling, I got the gloves on.
The smell that wafted out of the zip lock bag with the grubby diaper when I un-zipped it was… well, it was not pleasant. And I grew up on a farm, so I know “unpleasant” smells. It didn’t help any that it had a few hours to ferment. I placed the plastic cup down, unscrew the cap and place it on a paper towel. I was not about to get shit all over the place except for in the cup or on my nifty green gloves. I unwrapped the spoon from its wrapper.
“What the fuck is this?”
It was a tongue depressor not a spoon.
“Great. Just great.”
While I was standing there in my tight green gloves, scraping shit out of my daughter’s soiled diaper with a tongue depressor I thought to myself, “Now, I know and have known many people with kids, and I have NEVER heard of anyone else EVER having to do this. This is the type of things parents don’t tell people thinking about having kids because if they did, those people would get a hamster instead.”
I came out of the bathroom, mission accomplished.
“Thank you Mr. Lassen.”
“Oh no, thank you for this experience.”
“Ummm, Mr. Lassen?”
“Yes.” I said proudly, expecting him to complement me on my immaculate shit scraping skills. I was wrong.
“This may not be enough. Did you get as much as you could?”
“There wasn’t much to get.”
He reached behind the counter and handed me another plastic zip lock bag with the word, “BIOHAZARD!” written on it. Inside it was a set of green plastic gloves, a plastic cup and a “spoon”.
“We may need you to collect more samples if this isn’t enough to perform all the test. We’ll call and let you know.”
“And that’s one call I’ll be looking forward to. Thank you kind sir.”
“Have a good weekend Mr. Lassen.”
“You to.” It’ll be best if I don’t have to treasure hunting in my daughter’s diaper anymore.
Oh, the things we parents do for our kids. I’m just finding out and I have a feeling that this is only the beginning.
I AM The Hollywood Clown
My friend Stacy’s disdain for passing out goody bags at birthday parties was recently brought to my attention via Facebook. She realized that she needs “20 of something” to handout, and being a working mom she doesn’t have a second to shop. Within her status, she received lots of advice from her friends on what to do… and what not to do.
“I stopped doing them! They are a stupid idea!!” Allyson said.
“Hate them. Skip them!!!” stated Christine.
Janice’s advice, “I truly do not think the kids will notice no gift bag. Go for it!”
Yet Darcy added, “My daughter actually cried at a party that did not have them.”
While performing at a birthday party, I once witnessed a pack of children ravenously chanting “Goody bags! Goody bags! Goody bags!” It was like the overly zealous kids from Children Of The Corn on crack. I can honestly say that I don’t remember the exact moment when goody bags became the “norm” at birthday parties. It makes you think, “Who started the whole ‘goody bag’ craze anyway?” Obviously, it wasn’t a working parent.
In Los Angeles, the contents of GB’s from a party can get as competitive as the party itself. The really wealthy clients would have the party planning company provide the GB’s so they didn’t have to think about it. I remember clients that would specifically say, “We would like to have the same goody bags that you handed out at the Spielberg’s party, but better. We’ll pay more, of course.” Well, I’m going to let you all in on a big secret. My bosses would send me to downtown Los Angeles to purchase cheap $1 toys in bulk to stuff into the goody bags for the children of celebrity millionaires.
Have we gotten to the point of no return? Are goody bags expected? Is it a regional/class thing? Thus the question: To goody bag or not to goody bag? Do we teach our children that goody bags are a token of generosity and not a requirement?
My wife loves goody bags. She loves getting them and she loves giving them. But for her getting one is a bonus, not an expectation, and perhaps that is the difference.
In my opinion, the best piece of advice Stacy received was from her friend Dawn: “Give them a book.” And that is what she did. Reading: the gift that gives a lifetime.
I AM The Hollywood Clown
Category
Hello World! I’m back.
I know it’s been a while since you’ve heard from me but I’ve been very busy. I broke my neck two years ago and you’d be surprised how long it takes for a neck to heal. The thumb, pointer and middle finger on my left hand were affected by my spinal cord being pinched by two of the disc in my neck. This slowed down my typing skills and it still does. For the first year of my injury I was too depressed to sit down anything other than an email or Facebook status update.
I got a kick in the butt from a fellow writer friend who sat down with me and said, “You need to self publish.” I can honestly say I never thought about self publishing before because I was guessing it was going to be expensive. So much so, I didn’t even research or ask anyone about doing it. Come to find out, you can do it for under $1000 if you want. That’s still a lot of money but if you really believe in your product, why not invest in it. So I dusted myself off and got back to finishing my book. I did one more major rewrite, which took around 6 months to do, and then I got started on the cover. I changed the original cartoon cover with a more realistic one. Going out and taking the photo graphs myself I got the help of one of my cousins daughters, who’s in college for graphic designs, to put it all together. Months of going back and forth we finally got a covered we both liked. Because of legal reasons, I had to ditch that cover and come up with a new one. Back out to the street I went with my camera to start over. It was finally finished.
Here we are, nine and a half years later after I first sat down and started to write, “Hollywood Clown”, and it comes out on October 1st 2013. You can get it at Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Nobel and Kobo Books. You can also go to this websites home page, click on the photo of the book cover and it’ll take you to my book on Amazon.
I have a lot more to say on many things so I’ll be back.
In the meantime, check out some of the book teasers I put up on YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/user/TheHollywoodClown?feature=watch
I AM The Hollywood Clown