this special, pleasure-giving device, I have found myself getting more cranky and irritable as each day passed.
Of course, I'm talking about the TV remote. God, get your minds out of the gutter.
Having searched every conceivable corner of my house, and having come up empty, I had resigned myself to a miserable existance of having to get up to channel-surf. Believe me, it has been absolutely terrible.
Last night was trash night. Having cleaned the litter boxes, and emptied the baskets in the kitchen and bathroom, I realized that there was one more receptacle that required my attention. My son's diaper pail.
My son, who is going to be 4 years old soon, has stubbornly refused to take the final step to total potty-training. Oh, he'll go when you take him. But every now and then, when things get too quiet, you know exactly what he's up to:
Me: "Joey?"
Joey, from some hidden corner of the house: "LEAVE ME ALONE!"
Me: "Are you pooping?"
Joey: "Yeah."
Me, with more than a little annoyance in my voice: "Why aren't you going in the potty?"
Joey: "Because, yes." OF COURSE! HOW STUPID OF ME!
So, there I stood, eyeballing the
diaper pail that has been utilized for the pull-up
poopies.
[shameless product plug] Thanks to the
industrial-strength deodorizers and cleaning products
from my job [/shameless product plug], I had not needed
to empty the pail for a while. Now, it was time. Father
Feces was winning the war of stench.
So, pulling my shirt up over my nose and mouth to
prevent gagging and blistering, I opened the pail and
removed the bag. As I pulled the bag out, it swung
against my leg, and something hard was inside. This was
not fossilized poop. I knew the feel of its tapered
shaft, its softly protruding tip, its pleasure-giving
buttons. My beloved remote! About 3/4 of the way down
into the bag. Awww, isn't my son just the cutest little
thing?
I pondered the situation. Opening the top, and diving my
hand down into the butt mulch, was definitely out. I
decided to take the path of least resistance: I tore a
small hole in the bag, and started pulling it out. I got
it halfway out... and it got stuck. I made the hole a
little bigger, and immediately saw the reason it was
stuck: a smiling Care Bear was cradling it like a
newborn. The smiling Care Bear, of course, was the
design printed on the outside of the pull-up... meaning
that the inside of the pull-up, with its vile contents,
was wrapped around my beloved remote. And it wasn't
letting go without a fight.
Angered, I yanked the remote free. Which was probably a
bad idea. This created a smearing down the bottom half
of the remote, which doubled both the cleanup time and
the grossness factor.
After an extended cleaning, utilizing Lysol, Q-tips, and
my wife's nail file to get the poop out that was wedged
in between the buttons, I stood up, raised it into the
air, letting out a Rambo-style yell of exultation.
Victory was mine!
I sat down on my bed, pointed my beloved remote at the
TV, pressed the button...
It didn't work.
Apparently the extended exposure to the moisture inside
the smiling Care Bear pull-up had fried the circuit
board. It was dead. For the first time since Game 7 of
the 2003 ALCS, my eyes started watering up with sadness.
My wife informed me that Target had the cutest universal
remote on sale... with the image of smiling Care Bears
on it. I may get it, just to draw bloody daggers on it.