No More Peaceful Poops

You know, having a leisurely Number 2 in the safety and sanctity of my own bathroom used to be a wonderful thing. A rare moment of silence and solitude in an increasingly busy and noisy world.

Well, among the many things I gave up when I sired my two wonderful sons is the privilege... Nay, the right, to poop in peace.

This morning, Zakk woke the entire house at 05:15. Since my wife can charitably be called "Not a morning person", it usually falls to my insomniac ass to play Pre-Dawn Policeman to the two human hurricanes that I now share a house with. Tam can thus snatch a few more precious minutes of sleep until I have to start my morning toilette and go to work.

This morning, the urge to, um... "Close a small deal" hit early and urgently. I thus shipped the boys off into a different part of the house, and sat down to answer nature's call. (Note that, out of necessity, Zakk is usually at my feet during occasions like these, as he is 10 months old and can't be trusted to not eat every single piece of paper he lays eyes upon) I even gently closed the door over, hoping that Ricky would be sufficiently distracted by pretending to be various superheroes to allow me to conclude my urgent business quickly.

Well, parents of small children will laugh aloud at my vain hopes and shattered dreams. The door was closed over for perhaps 88 femtoseconds before it burst inwards, followed by my oldest son brandishing an umbrella. The umbrella, you see, is a hook which allows him to shoot robots, which he informed me at the top of his lungs. Ricky then noticed a video I was watching on Facebook of a group of athletes running and concluded that they "must be running after an American football". He then set off himself to retrieve my football from my Man Cave. He brought it to me to show it to me in the way that only a pre-schooler can. (That is, by shoving it in your face so insistently that it is as though he's trying to place it directly in your eyeball)

Perhaps inspired by his big brother's high-energy antics, Zakk chose to set a land speed record while crawling out of arm's length. He then began climbing into and out of the shower, taking advantage of its echo-chamber-like properties to better ensure that the random screeches and whines he was directing at no one in particular reached the maximum volume tolerable by human ears. (Or, at least, that's how it felt to me, given that I was attempting in vain to keep noise levels down) It was like being trapped in a cell with a deranged superhero fighting his evil dolphin nemesis. He subsequently began slamming the door into the wall with all the force his tiny, but somehow inhumanly strong, frame could muster, making the unbelievable racket I imagine a dinosaur would have made after coming home drunk and finding that he had locked his keys inside his house.

When the cat joined us in the 3 metre by 1 metre room, my digestive system well and truly rebelled. No deals were being closed today. I stood up and, in an attempt to not crush underfoot one of my precious sources of endless noise and expense, actually tripped over the toilet, which is a brand new indignity, but sadly not my lowest one as a father.

During the course of history, many fathers have been deposed from their thrones by their sons. Well, today I am a broken man after having my offspring force me off the Porcelain Throne.

A new regime is in place, and may God have mercy on our souls.