When a cliché becomes a reality, you adapt
I found myself in the middle of a classic parenting crisis a little while ago. We were bundled up and heading out the door to go to the library for a quick visit before dinner. Max was done his pre-trip bathroom pit stop, and I was heading in to do the same.
In the bathroom, I discover one of the world’s worst sights: an overflowing toilet full of human ick. My mind races back to the morning’s conversation:
“Dad, I have to tell you something. The toilet paper roll fell into the toilet.”
“Did you take it out and throw it out?”
“No, it had poop on it.”
“So what did you do?”
“I flushed it down.”
At the time, I had wondered how that had actually happened, but it was 7AM and my critical thinking skills were still offline. I did take a look at the toilet, but didn’t see any sign of something going wrong.
Flash forward to 4:30PM, with something very obviously going wrong. The very normal emotional responses of anger, disgust, and panic rushed towards my brain in a dead heat. But, luckily, a sense of calm stepped in the way. Instead of freaking out (and I so wanted to freak out), I looked at the gross scene in front of me and told myself “this is a thing that is happening. And I will deal with it.”
I calmly worked on plunging the atrocity down the pipes, as Max clarified that he had used the toilet brush to push the soggy toilet paper roll down the flush this morning. When the bowl finally emptied after repeated plunging attempts, I gave a small silent cheer of relief.I suppressed my revulsion as I cleaned up the horrifying water coating the floor, and I doused the area with the most toxic and powerful array of cleaning agents that I could.
Throughout the ordeal, I kept a calm, positive demeanor (with intermittent exclamations of ‘oh this is gross’). Max and I discussed the situation and agreed that, in the future, he should wait until mom or dad are awake before trying to resolve a toilet-based issue. I told him that I did appreciate that he tried to fix a problem himself, and that he had no reason to know that the toilet paper would expand and plug the drain. And after giving myself a little clean-up, we continued along on our trip to the library.
After it was all said and done, I was struck by the lack of an emotional aftermath, If I had lost my cool and started bellowing, it would have made the rest of the afternoon and evening stressful and negative for both of us. Hopefully, I can start applying this technique to every challenge I face, but I’m still a normal person , and sometimes I’m going to flip right out.
Oh and yes, I did eventually realize while planning this blog post, that the experience could be summed up with the phrase “sh*t happens”. At the heart of every cliché lies a nugget of truth, I suppose.
Chris Loblaw, Author 
Nugget he he