Potty Talk And The Flying Boy

Six years ago this week, my sister, Dana, was very pregnant. In fact, she was so pregnant that she went into labor at the end of the week, on Friday the 13th.

After school ended that day—I was still teaching elementary music at the time—I drove to the hospital to wait. I waited through the afternoon and evening, greeting friends and family members who stopped by to visit, but I didn’t go back to see my sister until later that night.

Sometime after dark, when hospital traffic had lessened, my best friend, Angela, came to visit the family and me. Desiring some fresh air, I walked Angela to her car, and when I tried to return to the hospital through the door from which we came, I couldn’t! The doors had been locked.

I found an unlocked entrance in just enough time to make it to the waiting room, get a visitor’s pass, join my mom, and go back to see my sister moments before the doctor came to check her progress. My mom and I waited at the curtained delivery room entrance while the doctor examined Dana and determined that she was ready to start pushing. Fascinated by everything I was hearing, I didn’t budge, but my mom was so nervous about what she was hearing that she returned to the waiting room .

A few minutes later, my sister asked if I was still there. I said yes. She said you can come in. I went in. And that’s how I ended up glued to a hospital chair, watching in both horror and awe, as my nephew, Griffin, came flying into the world—literally. Once Griffin’s shoulder was freed, he flew out and the doctor had to catch him and I remember thinking, “Wow! He looked like a blue rag doll flying through the air!”

Six years later, Griffin is a highly intelligent, lego-loving kindergartener with an active imagination that does things like name the trees in his yard “The Far Tree of Knolls” and “The Near Tree of Knolls” and create his own company called Gromex.

Yet even highly intelligent young lads cannot resist potty talk and bathroom humor. Recently, at the Museum of Science and History in Jacksonville, FL, Griffin (and his sister Amelia) grinned from ear to ear and giggled uncontrollably as I read aloud the exhibit on flatulence.

Making fart noises and using potty talk is the source of much of Griffin’s humor, and while I know that I’m not supposed to laugh at it, I must admit that I sometimes do...especially when I receive a picture message from my sister with the caption, “Your daily dose of potty talk,” created by a sick almost six-year-old whom I adore and that I once watched fly into this world.