It’s nap time here at the MennoDaddy household, which gives me a little time to sit back with a glass of scotch and take stock of the past few weeks. I’ve got two sickies today as a single parent, which makes things a little more stressful than usual. But a man’s gotta blog, so I’ll take the time to finish up a post I’ve been working on for the past couple of weeks.
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Parenthood, to further abuse an already overused trope, is a journey. You pack your kids into their metaphoric car seats and, paradoxically, they end up driving the vehicle themselves like a sedan with cut brakes, whizzing you along pell-mell through the mean streets of life, down the stinking alleys full of discarded diapers and time-out corners, and repeatedly running the red light at the intersection of order and chaos. You never know when the car stops whether you’ll end up at home in your driveway or in some downtrodden ‘hood with a flat tire and locked doors while a mustachioed thug knocks on your windshield and says “You look lost, ese.”
Which is how I found myself holding my son inside the women’s restroom at McDonalds† recently.
Pervy connotations aside (and I know that’s what you’re thinking, shut up), there’s more to the story. Bear with me.
Sundays at the MennoDaddy household are frantic things. Church is a good 25 minutes away, and since the Lovely Wife™ works weekends at the hospital and we have only one car, attendance is spotty at best. Usually it means either borrowing a car or carpooling with my parents. This particular Sunday morning, I had the inlaw’s car for a couple of weeks as they were on a trip.
The kids love church. It’s a kid-friendly, progressive, welcoming congregation who don’t mind in the slightest if there’s a newly-ambulatory little person who toddles up to the front periodically to play in the rock pit behind the podium. Kids are welcome there. I grew up in that church and did the same things I’m sure that I see my children doing now — coloring, pushing Matchbox cars up the chair legs, writhing on the floor in abject boredom — and nobody bats an eye. There’s also a large toy room downstairs where the wee ones can go after children’s time. And while Norah’s extreme sensitivity usually means it’s never a given that she’ll go down there without me, lately she’s been having a good time, both during church and in her sunday school class for 3-4 year olds.
The routine is as follows: the kids wake up, drink their apple juice, get dressed, eat breakfast, and then watch their Papa scramble to get their shoes and coats on while they drag their feet only to arrive 10 minutes late. Of course, there’s the the obligatory stop for coffee en route. (Yes, I still patronize Starbucks even though I’m a dedicated home roaster, because there’s no time to brew another pot and dammit, I need that extra fix.)
So that morning we get to church and all goes well. Norah spent an inordinate amount of time hanging around the snack/drink table during Fellowship Hour that day, something that, in retrospect, should’ve set alarm bells ringing in my head. After Sunday School I swept them all up and headed back home. We will on occasion stop at McDonalds to pick up lunch so I don’t have to worry about fixing it myself when we get home and they can get down for naps at a decent hour. Which is what we did that day.
The drive-through line was particularly long that day, and we waited about five minutes before getting up to the speaker. I ordered – #3 combo with sweet tea; hamburger Happy Meal, no pickle, apple juice; chicken nuggets Happy Meal, no sauce, apple juice – and had just rolled up my window when I hear a tenuous voice behind me:
“Papa, I have to go potty.”
Crap. I knew I forgot something.
“Sweetie, we’re in line. Can you hold it?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?” We’re nearing the payment window.
“Yes.”
I know my daughter. From the moment she tells me that she has to go potty, there’s a maximum ten-minute window before crisis. Which will get me through the drive through line, but there’s no way we’re making it home in time.
“Okay, sweetie, let’s get our food and then I’ll take you inside.”
Four minutes later I pull up to the window only to have the pimpled teenager look at me and say “We’re waiting on the chicken nuggets. Can you please pull up a little and we’ll bring it out?” We were parked.
Having worked at McDonalds in high school, I knew that getting “parked” was code for “get the asshole waiting on his order out of the line so they don’t hold up the people behind him and we can meet our drive-through time quotas.” I also knew I had no choice – I had to go in NOW or I’d be scrubbing down a car seat later. I pulled into a parking space and got the kids out. Holding Levi, I walked with Norah to the front counter, flagged down Pimply Fry Guy, and asked if he’d just put the food on the counter while I took my kids to the bathroom.
The advantage to having young children is that they are exceptions to the bathroom gender rules. Nobody cares if you take your young daughter with you into the men’s room, or vice versa for my wife and Levi. Besides, history and live sporting events have proven the maxim the men’s room is always, always faster. I guided Norah through the door.
There was a LINE. Inconceivable!
Fine, I thought. We guys are nothing if not lightning fast on the crapper. It comes with the plumbing. We’ll be in and out in no time. But we wait. And wait. Finally, wondering what the heck is the hold-up, I discreetly dropped my keys, giving me an opportunity, under the pretense of picking them up, to get a glimpse under the stall.
Sure enough. Old Man Shoes™.
By now we’ve reached DEFCON 4. Levi’s wriggling in my arms like a cuttlefish, Norah’s doing the Pee-Pee Dance and looking at me with wide-eyed concern, near to panic. I had to man up. Take decisive action. Make an executive decision.
We left the bathroom and went across the hall.
“Okay, Norah,” I said, “Papa can’t go in the women’s bathroom, but YOU can. Are you able to go potty all by yourself?”
She looked at me for a second, and I saw The Meltdown Look. I know that look well. Being a Highly Sensitive Child (HSC), Norah has always been a girl who responds to pressure by completely falling to pieces. When she’s out of her comfort zone, she collapses inward, usually reverting to tears. It’s a physical phenomenon. You can see it in her face. You can almost see her whole body contract as her face reddens and she nears the meltdown point. I saw it clearly just then. Shit.
“Honey, you need to be brave. Can you do it?”
Eyes well with tears. Face screws up. Head shakes. Any second now there’s going to be waterworks from at least two orifices, one of them much, MUCH worse than the other one.
Nobody’s left the men’s room throughout all this time. I sigh, close my eyes. Count to three. And, still holding Levi, frog-march Norah into the ladies’ room.
Empty. Inconceivable!!
Calculating what must be almost lottery-winning odds, I exhaled a breath I didn’t know I had been holding and shove Norah towards one of the empty stalls, praying to God, Allah, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and whatever other deity might be listening that I make it out of there unseen. Levi wanted to get down. My arms ached. My stomach churned. “Hurry up, please,” I asked Norah. “Okay, Papa,” she replies.
There was a point after that little exchange where I had a glimmer of hope that I might just pull through this encounter without humiliating myself. I had just reached that point, when the door opened and my heart sunk to somewhere around my ankles.
The woman who walked through that door was probably in her late 20s. Average height. Chin-length black hair. Cute, if a little WASP-y. Not exactly someone who you would look at and expect to be nonplussed at the sight of two dudes standing in the women’s loo.
She stopped dead in her tracks, mouth slightly open. She titled her head to the side a little, as if examining a particularly interesting Van Gogh. I managed a sheepish half-smile and stuck my thumb towards the stall. “My daughter’s in there,” I said.
The woman looked at me, then swung her head around to see the pink shoes dangling beneath the stall. She looked back at me, then back to the shoes. Me. Shoes. The silence stretched to the breaking point. I sensed a feedback loop approaching.
“Uh…” I managed, “she has separation issues.”
After staring at those little pink shoes again, the woman finally looked back at me for a few seconds, and shrugged, then went inside the stall next to Norah.
I sighed with relief. What are the odds? It was pretty obvious she either attended school at a liberal arts college or had experienced a co-ed bathroom at some point in the recent past.
An undisclosed period of time later – could be minutes, could be months – Norah finished up, washed her hands, and said “Let’s go, Papa.” You betcha, babe. I grabbed her hand, held my head high, and strolled back out into the McDonalds lobby, ignoring the shocked stares from the two middle-aged women about to enter.
I picked up our waiting food, buckled the kids in, drove home, fed them lunch, put them to bed, sat down on the couch, and immediately died of mortification.
Is there a moral to this story? Probably. Most stories like this have one. But darned if I can figure it out, apart from the knowledge that as a father I’d rather mortify myself than my children. I’d rather shoulder the burden of being the Pervy Guy in the Ladies Room ™ than watch helplessly as my daughter wets her pants in a public restaurant. I spare my daughter a traumatic experience, and I get a damned good blog post out of the deal. And all it cost me was a temporary loss of my own dignity.
That’s a journey that I can live with.
† – Per the newly-enacted FTC guideline 16 C.F.R. Part 255, I hereby deny any material connection between this blog and the Starbucks Corporation or McDonalds Ltd. No royalties were received, dang it. I can only wish it were so. Now back off and don’t send me to the hoosegow.Popularity: 5% [?]
