Sunday, September 07, 2003 |
Being a parent desensitises you to disgusting things
It’s amusing how much your tolerance for normally nauseating things goes way up after being a parent.
I assume it is something to do with the fact that you so routinely have someone else’s faeces and urine all over your hands. Add to this being constantly surrounded by snotty noses, grubby hands and for really young kids, the ever present smell of vomit.
It must be that they are your own children which makes all the difference. It remains however that it is still someone’s shit and piss right there on your hands.
To your average person or even the experienced parent having long since endured this most stomach-turning right of passage to child rearing, the idea of some how placing your hand in an 8 inch log originating from the bot-bot of another person would fairly quickly be followed by uncontrollable retching, about 10 successive showers and the act of burning everything you had on at the time.
To the parents of children under 3 (and anyone who surfed at Bondi beach in the 80’s) it happens every day.
In fact I can recall one particularly gross episode that occurred while I was giving my two boys (ages 3 and 1) a bath. I was teaching them how to blow bubbles in the water while I knelt down beside the bath, sticking my face in the water. I did this a couple of times to their delight and they began to do it as well which made us all laugh.
What happened next was not funny however. While I was face down in the water blowing bubbles, I failed to notice that only my eldest son was following suit. What I did not see was my youngest boy silently crouching up the shallow end of the bath, concentrating on the job at hand. Having a fairly large lung capacity I was able to keep blowing for about 20 seconds or so. Eventually I had to come up for air and there it was. Bobbing mere centimetres from my face, a floater that could have rivalled the magnitude of the Battleship Bismarck. The two boys has also dispersed to either end of the bath in an attempt to gain as much distance as possible.
Had this happened a few years ago before the arrival of my children, I imagine I would have reacted rather more erratically than the cool, calm actions I took.
Of course the one big benefit to all this is that it has stopped me bitting my nails.
P.S. Happy Fathers Day to all the Dads today especially to both my own wonderful Father and Father in Law.
It’s amusing how much your tolerance for normally nauseating things goes way up after being a parent.
I assume it is something to do with the fact that you so routinely have someone else’s faeces and urine all over your hands. Add to this being constantly surrounded by snotty noses, grubby hands and for really young kids, the ever present smell of vomit.
It must be that they are your own children which makes all the difference. It remains however that it is still someone’s shit and piss right there on your hands.
To your average person or even the experienced parent having long since endured this most stomach-turning right of passage to child rearing, the idea of some how placing your hand in an 8 inch log originating from the bot-bot of another person would fairly quickly be followed by uncontrollable retching, about 10 successive showers and the act of burning everything you had on at the time.
To the parents of children under 3 (and anyone who surfed at Bondi beach in the 80’s) it happens every day.
In fact I can recall one particularly gross episode that occurred while I was giving my two boys (ages 3 and 1) a bath. I was teaching them how to blow bubbles in the water while I knelt down beside the bath, sticking my face in the water. I did this a couple of times to their delight and they began to do it as well which made us all laugh.
What happened next was not funny however. While I was face down in the water blowing bubbles, I failed to notice that only my eldest son was following suit. What I did not see was my youngest boy silently crouching up the shallow end of the bath, concentrating on the job at hand. Having a fairly large lung capacity I was able to keep blowing for about 20 seconds or so. Eventually I had to come up for air and there it was. Bobbing mere centimetres from my face, a floater that could have rivalled the magnitude of the Battleship Bismarck. The two boys has also dispersed to either end of the bath in an attempt to gain as much distance as possible.
Had this happened a few years ago before the arrival of my children, I imagine I would have reacted rather more erratically than the cool, calm actions I took.
Of course the one big benefit to all this is that it has stopped me bitting my nails.
P.S. Happy Fathers Day to all the Dads today especially to both my own wonderful Father and Father in Law.
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