Dookies!!!

As my best friend Paul likes to point out (repeatedly and at great length), I have a bit of an obsession with poop. I can't deny it. I don't mean "obsession" in the "rolling around in it" sense. Let's please be very clear about that. My enjoyment of poop does not extend in any way to wearing it, smelling it, touching it or (shudder) eating it. I do quite like to talk about it though... Furthermore, I seem to have this uncanny ability to steer any conversation I'm involved in, regardless of topic or context, inexorably poop-ward.

I would like very much to think that this is because I recognize the unique comic properties of poop... It is a social taboo, yet it's something that all of us share and experience... We are embarrased by it, yet we all do it daily (or nearly daily, for you clenchers out there)... It's also an extremely cheap and easy laugh. Especially if you're Sally. Those of you who have met my wife know what I mean.

Paul has another theory, one based on a story from my childhood. As much as I hate to admit it, his theory isn't entirely far fetched. I'd like to offer up this story (and Paul's theory) to you, my Blog-Buddies, and ask you to weigh in.

The year was... Well, it was a while ago, and I was just a toddler. Maybe 2 years old. The day was hot and sticky, and my mother was beside herself with excitement. The reason for this excitement was that my mother, for the first time in her life, was about to enter the posh Baltimore Country Club. My grandparnets, her in-laws, were members, and they had decided to allow my mom (and her beautiful baby boy) to use their membership and spend a day by the pool, hob-nobbing among the Baltimore elite. (Is there such a thing as an elite in this town?)

This was a big deal for my mom. I think she probably felt in many ways like she had finally arrived, so to speak. And so there she was at last, by the pool. Waiters were carrying drinks to the sunbathing mothers... The whole place, I'm sure, smelled like suntan lotion and money... My mother squeezed my chubby arms into a pair of floaties (remember floaties?) and plopped me into the wading pool. Then she picked out a nice lounge chair in a sunny spot and commenced with the well-heeled relaxing.

This lasted all of, I don't know, 3 minutes or so, before there was a huge commotion over in the wading pool. Some older kids (older than me... like 4?) were screaming "Dookies, dookies!!!" All the mothers came rushing over, and there I was, sitting in the middle of the pool, surrounded my 4 or 5 little floating turds. Yup. I grumped in the Baltimore Country Club's wading pool. Moms began snatching their children out of the now contaminated pool... My poor mother was, at this point, splashing around trying to scoop up the offending nuggests... I, of course, was just floating there, happy as a jaybird... And the whole thing was going down to that chorus of "Dookies, dookies!!!"

A scant 2 minutes later and there I was in my baby seat with my mortified mother screaming at me as we tore out of the gates of the Baltimore Country Club.

To this very day, my friends, she has never gone back. Although, to be fair, I'm pretty sure she's forgiven me by now.

Okay there's the story. It's cute, and a little funny... But now we get to Paul's theory. He insists that this is the exact moment in my young formative life where I equated poop with attention.

When he told me this, I opened my mouth to tell him to go fuck himself, but then fell silent. Shit. Shit, he's got a point.

Anybody want to ring in on this one? Am I comedicaly enlightened, or am I the turd-centric version of Pavlov's dogs?

As an aside, I want to say that I thoroughly enjoyed meeting many of my fellow Balti-bloggers at the happy hour last night. You is my dawgs now. ACW however, is the dawg that I'm keeping chained up in the back yard, because frankly that fucker has a scary brain.