But the idea of one human manually removing snot from another human's body was too much for me to handle. I was never one of those children who would pick my boogers in class and eat it out of some sort of sick salty enjoyment. (Note* I was informed by a friend that the reason some children eat their boogers is because of the salty taste. Your welcome.)
As a child, my minuscule hands always fell victim to "booger traps." You know -those kids who would shovel a booger out of their tiny nostril and smear it onto miscellaneous classroom objects with the assumption that the booger would magically disappear by ascending into it's own alternate booger dimension.
Somehow my hand always found those treacherous booger traps. I loathed boogers. I loathed everything that was capable of escaping the human nose or butt. It horrified me that such an abstract substance lived in such a small space on our faces.
Now here I was, in the presence of one of my greatest childhood fears (the others being touching real poo, the spiders on my bedroom ceiling, and E.T. the extraterrestrial). As I soured my face in disgust, my sister turned to me and said, "that's love."
"That's ...what?" I said.
"That's love." She said. "Life is about helping others."
I nodded.
She continued, "We must always help the ones we love in anyway we are capable of doing."
I nodded some more.
She continued, "My baby needed to breathe, so I did what I was capable of doing to help him."
I nodded five more times.
"I understand." I said.
Filing this knowledge into my cranial archives, I went about my life.
Four years later, my sister gave birth to her third child. By this time she was the happy mother of three boys. One day, as I was babysitting the delightful trio, the youngest of the three began to cry furiously.
Now, you know how I mentioned earlier that a baby's helpless cry is one of the saddest (yet ridiculously cute) soul squeezing sounds you'll ever hear in your life? This cry sounded much different than that. This cry wasn't a regular cry. This cry sounded like that cry, if that cry were on crystal meth.
I desperately stumbled through various options to mute the haunting sound.
First I tried a bottle.
No.
Then I tried to burp him.
No.
Then I tried changing his diaper.
No.
There was nothing on the diaper. It was virtually spotless! But then, my eyes panned to his tiny bum.
There, peeking out from between his mini cheeks, was a massive piece of poo. The ratio of poo too bum was completely unfair to his tiny body. How could such a small human harbor the strength required to push this ferocious beast from out of itself? The answer was clear: he wouldn't. He couldn't. In other words: My nephew was really constipated and I would have to get over my fears, and pull out the piece of poo myself.
In one triumphant motion, I grasped the massive object with the tip of my fingers and, while trying to maintain my balance, pulled it out.
It was the first time I ever touched poo with my bare hands. I felt like a superhero. Within seconds of the poo's escape, the crying stopped. Silence filled the room, and love filled my heart.
Sometimes in life, we are witness to seeing lots of crap clogging the happiness of the people we love.
We may not be perfect, but we must always do our best to help them in any way we are capable of doing.
Everyone is entitled to breathe clearly and have a silent mind.
Have a nice day.
xo Mel
***Note:
For fairness purposes I have also included a cartoon baby picture of my middle nephew below. Otherwise, he would punish me for not including him in the story.
***Note:
For fairness purposes I have also included a cartoon baby picture of my middle nephew below. Otherwise, he would punish me for not including him in the story.
