Pooping at the Dunkin Donuts
On my workdays, I take Princess Beast to her Grandma’s house. On our way, we usually stop at Dunkin Donuts to pick up Grandma’s babysitting wages: one bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on an English muffin and a hot, black coffee. More importantly to PB, we pick up a strawberry frosted donut with sprinkles—an appropriately princessy donut for an extra princessy girl.
Yesterday, while we were sitting in line at the drive-thru, PB said the words that every parent dreads: “I fink I have a big poop in my belly. And I fink it wants to come out.”
“Do you think you can wait until Grandma’s house?” I asked.
“No, I afwaid not.”
“OK, baby. Here’s what we’ll do. I’m going to drive you to Grandma’s and drop you off—”
“—BUT MY PINK DONUT!”
“—and then I’m going to come back here to pick it up. OK?”
“OK.” By this time, she was holding onto her belly with both hands, as if trying to manually keep the poop in place.
Never a good sign.
A worse sign: the cars in front of me in line were actually trucks and those trucks were Ford F-150s. If you don’t live in the country, let me explain about the Ford F-150, the chariot of choice here in the sticks. It is the size of an aircraft carrier. It takes approximately 100 gallons of gas to power. And anyone who’s driving one is almost certainly an asshole.
But wait! I hear you say. What if I’m using my Ford F-150 for work? Aren’t you being classist, entitled, jerkfaced, etc.?
If you are using your Ford F-150 for work, I will eat my modest Nissan without salt. I will chew it up, starting with the bumpers, and ending with the tail pipe, and then I will belch and say, “Oh, I’m so sorry, genuine working-class person. Please go about your hauling in peace and prosperity.”
And there’s a non-zero chance that I will have to do this. (Note: even if you prove me wrong, I will not do this.) There are some people—tradespeople, farmers, people who have a great big fishing boat—who genuinely need the towing power of a gigantic fucking truck. The rest of you are just mean-mugging normal-sized cars.
In real life, I have never seen a Ford F-150 hauling anything but white rage. Every single one I have ever seen looks like it was polished with a chamois and kept in a crystal garage. It’s a working-class symbol that retails for upwards of $35,000.
But that’s all beside the point, which is that these trucks, they take up too much goddamn room. For example, the three (3) Ford F-150s in front of me in line at Dunkin Donuts were each taking up a lane and a half. This made it impossible to get around them and thus out of the accursed drive-thru and on our way to Grandma’s house to use the toilet before my preschooler’s colon exploded.
“OK, new plan,” I told PB. “We’re gonna park right here and go to the bathroom at Dunkin Donuts.”
“OK,” she said, brightening up. The only thing PB likes more than sprinkles is an adventure and although we’ve used the drive-thru many, many times, we’d never been inside this particular Dunkin Donuts.
I pulled into a space, annoying the driver behind me, who was (you guessed it) driving a Ford F-150. I masked up. I masked up PB. We held hands and trotted across the parking lot. The bathroom was right by the door. It was empty, thank God.
I locked the door and said, “OK, remember: this is a public bathroom, so do not touch anything.”
“OK,” said PB, scrunching down her pants. “We don’t touch anyfing.”
“That’s right.” I tore off strips of toilet paper and lined the seat, and then lowered PB onto it. “Hold onto my hands, not the toilet seat.”
“OK,” said PB, holding onto the toilet seat and then lifting her hands as if they were scalded. “Oh, sorry, Mommy!”
I sighed. “It’s OK, baby. We’ll just wash extra carefully.”
Two minutes passed.
“Mommy? I don’t hafta poop anymore.”
I can’t really say I blamed her poop for crawling back up. After all that, who wouldn’t be shy?
After scrubbing our hands, we went out to the front and ordered our donuts and our coffee. PB waited for our order nervously, concerned that they might not have her donut in the front of the store, but I allayed her fears by showing her the rows of donuts on the rack. Then we danced around a little bit, enjoying the sunshine streaming in through the windows and the sugary smell that seeped into our masks.
An older man sitting in one of the booths smiled at us. I could see his smile because he wasn’t wearing a mask. The pandemic is over for everyone but the immunocompromised and parents of small children. His Ford F-150 was probably parked outside. But he seemed to appreciate PB, so I forgave him all his imaginary sins.
“She’s beautiful,” he said, as we collected our coffee and food and got ready to leave.
“Thank you,” I said.
And she is. And her mother is very judgmental. But together, we’re pretty good at problem-solving. At the very least, we know how to have fun.
What I’m Reading This Week
Shit, Actually by Lindy West. It’s a collection of movie reviews, which isn’t the important thing about it. The important thing about it is that it’s the funniest book I’ve read in I don’t even know how long.
She rates movies of a scale of X out of 10 DVDs of The Fugitive. That’s right: The Fugitive, the early ‘90s Harrison Ford vehicle in which he is wrongly accused of murdering his wife and goes on the run from Tommy Lee Jones, who doesn’t care about his guilt or innocence because he has scenery to chew.
Lindy West loves The Fugitive. Loves it. I though she was kidding, at first, when I read this paragraph:
Objectively, there's only one good movie, and it's The Fugitive. The Fugitive is the best movie because it has the best lines and is never scary, only interesting and exciting. We didn’t need any more movies after The Fugitive. We didn’t need any movies before it either. We should erase those. The Fugitive is the only good movie.
But she is not kidding. She goes on for pages about why The Fugitive is awesome—pacing, suspense, Harrison Ford—and darned if I’m not convinced by the end of the essay. I’m going to go watch The Fugitive as soon as possible. Right after I change my pants because I peed a little reading this book.