“Daddy I hafta go poop! I hafta go poop REAL BAD!!” Sophie screamed from right next to me in line waiting to pay for the books, her face suddenly flushed with panic.
The twenty other people waiting in line and all the other people on the first floor turned to watch. I’d never been to the bathroom in this B. Dalton before and looked around frantically to find it. She’d only been potty trained a few months and she meant business when she said she had to go. There was less than a minute window before I had a nasty situation.
The last cashier on the right motioned to me, smiling and concerned and bemused but hushedly so, like a librarian laughing, and pointed me to the back corner of the store, mouthing, “It’s right there,” in a silent whisper. As if saying the word bathroom would be any more embarrassing than my toddlers exclamations. Probably not wanting to be officially involved in this situation. The sheer number of books demanded silence and modesty. Like kryptonite to the librarian folk, all of it. Poop and yelling and attention, Oh, my! Shhhhhh.
“OK, honey, the bathrooms right over here…come on you’ll make it,” I said, praying she would.
She stopped dead in her tracks to yell some more, as if I was way across the store instead of inches from her. “Oh, never mind, it was just a fart!!”
Even through the intense embarrassment it was too funny not to laugh. Even as I leaned down to say, “OK, OK, not so loud, I can hear you honey. Are you sure? The bathroom’s just right there…”
“NO! It was just a FART!!” She said, angry at me like I was stupid which I was.
“OK, OK, I heard you…” I said and held her hand and waited in the book line that suddenly seemed interminably long. Everyone looking at us, smiling or laughing quietly on the entire bottom level of the biggest book store in little town. I felt shame and anger, even, that male anger over the loss of control and forced shame. I looked down to scold my daughter, little 2.5 year old Sophie, humming a made-up song and doing a weird shuffle dance as she held my hand. Already moved on, the whole incident that she didn’t even realize was an incident completely over. What was I going to tell her, don’t yell poop or fart in a crowded place? Don’t embarrass Daddy? What did I care, really? I wasn’t much more appropriate than her and I was a mostly grown man. That was just pride fucking with me. Marcellus Wallace from Pulp Fiction sprang into my mind, that band aid on the back of his neck, coaching his fighter how to throw the fight.
“Fuck pride,” he had said and I smiled real good as I looked at my girl. Any last vestige of pride was being beaten out of me. Which was a good thing, really. What good had it done me so far. I wasn’t really driving this particular large vehicle anyway and that was OK. I was the chauffeur and the chef and the babysitter and I was even in charge but I was not in control.
I squeezed Sophie’s hand. “I love you.” She squeezed my hand back and looked up at me, the perfect smile on her face. “I love you too Daddy.