Nuances of Potty Etiquette

Boys are easier, everyone you don't ask will tell you. Having had two girls, I couldn't tell you up until now. I now am the proud owner and operator of a real live boy. Now, in many ways, he is easier. There's no hair to style - you just shave it all off periodically. Clothes are the last thing he worries about. His favorite shoes are bedroom slippers or sometimes his snow boots on the hottest day of the year. There is no preamble to playing with a stranger such as "what is your name?" or "wanna be friends". Boys jump straight to "I'll be the monster".

Now, potty training, I assumed would be easier, though I was told this was the one area in which boys lagged. My little guy quickly figured out number two at age two, and I was forever thankful. It still amazes me, however, that I am the only member of the household capable of dealing with the results. But number one, that took awhile. And while he now understands that he must not pee in his "daddy underwear", it is taking a little longer to get the nuances of potty etiquette.

Today, while I had stepped to the rear of the truck to check my trailer hitch, I returned to the announcement that he'd gone potty. "Where?" I asked anxiously, knowing that he'd not left the truck cab. "Right there," he pointed to the back of one of the front seats. And there was the tell tale downward fan of wetness.

He doesn't understand yet that while it is okay to water the grass or tree, it is not okay to go wherever one can pull out the fire hose. I can understand the confusion. It is okay to go outside, for example, but not okay to go on the side of the house or the post of the porch. But that's outside, is it not? Periodically, I've let him use the horse trailer to pee (for God forbid anyone actually SEE him pee), but it is not okay to pee in the back of my truck bed and all over my folding canvas chair.

The one thing that I've been amused by is his modesty in it all. I assumed that boys would not have this, yet he generally shouts to me from a bathroom stall "Go away where I can't see your feet" and I have to back up to the sinks and pretend to be somewhere else. His modesty does not extend to his announcements publicly of coming events. "I HAVE TO POOP" he'll announce loudly in the checkout line.

This is an exercise in patience, for this requires not only a trip to the bathroom, but a complete disrobing down to his birthday suit a la George Kastanza (of Seinfeld fame). Off come the shoes, socks, shirt, pants. Why is this? I know my nephew did the same. My girls did not do this. I suppose, as it did with the girls, etiquette and wisdom comes with age. Now, off to scrub my truck carpet.