It was about five minutes later that a Chick-fil-A employee walked up and interrupted us.
“Ma’am, is that your boy in the bathroom?”
I stared at him, confused. I glanced at the playground, where I saw my son and my friend’s daughter playing well together.
“No,” I told the man. “All mine are on the playground.”
“You’re sure your boy’s not in the restroom?”
“I’m positive,” I told him, as he walked away.
And I was positive. Pretty positive. However, something didn’t sit right with me, so I got up and went into the play area. I called each of the kids. Foster: check. Pippi: check. Jake: crickets.
JAKE: crickets.
At which point I realized, to my dismay, that my friend’s youngest son, The Perpetrator, was NOT in the play area, and that he was, very probably, in fact in the bathroom.
I ran back to the back of the store and found a teenage employee standing outside the men’s room. It was about that time I heard the screaming. The screaming I must have been ignoring because MY kids were on the playground, and if there’s screaming that is not coming from MY kids then I just tune it out.
Now I heard it loud and clear.
I quickly realized that while I was taking the two kids to the toilet in the women’s bathroom earlier, The Perpetrator must have stealthily snuck out of the play place and gone into the men’s restroom. We were like ships passing in the night, and nary the two shall meet, or however that goes.
I looked at the Chick-fil-A employee and told him I needed to go into the men’s restroom, and he nodded his head.
I opened the door.
Nothing, not anything, nothing, nada, zilch, could have prepared me for what I was about to see and smell.
When I opened the bathroom door this is what I saw:
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The Perpetrator (age 3), naked, covered in poop.
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His clothes in a pile, covered in poop.
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The toilet, covered in poop.
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The urinal, covered in poop.
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The restroom floor. Covered. COVERED. in. poop.
Diarrhea, actually.
And the smell. That smell.
I threw up in my mouth. Now, before you go accusing me of exaggeration, let me state, for the record, that I ACTUALLY threw up IN MY MOUTH. I have heard people say that on a regular basis, and I am pretty sure that it actually happened zero of those times.
It happened this time.
The stench singed hairs in my nose I didn’t even know I had.
Now, to a normal person, this situation would have been overwhelming. Frustrating, Terrifying.
I, however, am not a normal person. I do not have a normal history with Chick-fil-A. The irony of this situation did not escape me, and so I did the only thing that seemed natural to me.
I laughed.
Like, REALLY laughed. Hysterically. Tears-pouring-down-my-face, couldn’t-talk-couldn’t-breathe kind of laughing. Screaming laughing. So hard that I was sobbing because I couldn’t get it together.
All the while The Perpetrator was standing, naked, staring at me, telling me that he was dirty and needed me to clean him up.
Hahahahahahahahaahahahahahahhahaah.
I didn’t know where to start with the mess. He had “tried” to clean up himself, only succeeding in rubbing orange poop into the white grout with toilet paper that had disintegrated into a million little fibers on the bathroom floor. He had “tried” to get on the potty, unsuccessfully, thus smearing orange poop all over it. He had even “tried” to sit in the urinal, leaving butt-smudges of poop everywhere.
Everywhere.
I was at a loss. I was laughing uncontrollably.
I finally stepped back outside, where the teenage kid was still standing. I needed cleaning supplies. Obviously. The problem was, I couldn’t tell him what I needed because I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t stop laughing/sobbing. I tried to tell him, and I even tried to explain myself, laughing/sobbing out something like, “I know it’s weird that I’m laughing when this kid has had explosive diarrhea all over the men’s bathroom, but you have to understand my history.”
Because that made sense. That fixed it.