My son, Clyde, loves being a boy. He loves to laugh at people whenever they fall down and hurt themselves (including himself), he loves eating the last slice of cold pizza while standing in front of the refrigerator, and he loves to watch TV in his underwear. But most of all, he loves being able to pee standing up.
He is almost five now, but to him the novelty and joy of this act never fails to amaze and delight him. “Come look!” he’ll command from the bathroom, and I’ll troop in just in time to see him standing in his evening bath, peeing into the cup we keep next the sink for rinsing. “I peed in the cup!” “Great, Clyde, um, thanks,” I’ll say, taking the warm cup from him and emptying it into the toilet. (What else could I say? After all, the whole cup thing is kind of my fault: I’m the one who–after watching him pee into his freshly drawn bath before stepping into it one night–pointed out to him at great length the inherent flaw in this system; the fact that he now pees in a cup instead of the bath shows me that at least he was listening. And besides, it’s not like I brush my teeth in that bathroom.)
He also enjoys peeing in tandem: if another male in the house is using the toilet, Clyde is always willing to sidle up next to them and have a go. (This, too, can only be seen as an improvement, since he also used to display this same enthusiasm with females as well.) And, of course, just like every male I have ever known (or driven, walked, or ridden by), Clyde loves to pee in the great outdoors.
In fact, he loves to do this so much that, like a sinner who has just found salvation, Clyde will “witness” this joy to others. (“Have you heard the good news? Peeing outside is great!”) He is willing to bring his message to just about anyone, but lately, the one he has been preaching to the most has been the little boy who lives down the street. (In this, too, I guess charity begins at home.) Of course, it wasn’t exactly a hard sell: no sooner had our two-year-old neighbor, Mision, seen the blissful expression on Clyde’s face as Clyde “watered the flowers” in the front yard then he was stripping off his diaper, eager to join in the fun. Unfortunately for all concerned, Clyde was just as eager to teach him, because that is where things started to get tricky.
There are all kinds of teachers: some believe in learning by rote while others in teaching by example; Clyde, unfortunately, is neither of those. Clyde believes in taking the “hands-on” approach, and, reaching over to Mision, that’s exactly what he did.
As you can well imagine, this led to a certain amount of awkwardness between Mision’s mother and myself, the sort of awkwardness that, had we too been male, could only have been covered up by some serious sports talk. In this case, however, I covered it up by shouting out words that I never thought I would hear coming out of my mouth.
Although by the time Clyde was born I already knew that there would be times when I would have to betray my inner thirteen-year-old by saying the kinds of things I had sworn never to say–things like: “Because I said so”; “Just one bite”; and “No, we can’t order pizza for dinner again”; never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would one day be shouting out the words: “Everybody keep their own hands on their own penises!”
Of course, I also never thought I would have to pay such close attention to the glass I used when I brushed my teeth, either.