Free I Heart My Little A-Holes by Karen Alpert

scrubbed it down with hand sanitizer afterwards. Not really, but let’s just pretend we did. Besides, I’m sure the airlines clean them really well between flights. Bwahahahaha!
    Anyways, towards the middle of the flight I get a whiff of the poopie smell again. Are you F’ing kidding me? Again?! I swear kids save their shit up for days so they can do it like a thousand times while you’re traveling. Luckily this time we can use the lavatory so Greg offers to change him, which sounds like he’s trying to be nice but really he just can’t take Caillou anymore.
    While they’re gone I can hear the people talking behind me again. Apparently one of them is actually getting sick over the smell. Hmm, I don’t really smell anything, but when Greg gets back I’ll ask him to take Zoey next just in case.
    “No poop!” Greg reports back to me as he hands me Holden and picks up Zoey to take her.
    Ohhh shit. As soon as he picks her up, I see it and get a giant whiff. There it is, straight out of a Stephen King movie, a giant brown amoeba oozing up the back of her pants. And the smell is atrocious. Why the hell didn’t those oxygen masks drop from the ceiling?
    So here’s the bad part. Can you F’ing believe it? I haven’t even gotten to the bad part yet. The seat she’s been sitting in is made out a dark pattern to disguise stains, but I lean over to smell and examine it more closely and there it is. A giant diarrhea spot on more than half of the seat cushion. Who the hell knew your seat cushion can be used as a floater device too?
    OMG, what the hell do I do? Should I ring the call button? I can’t decide so I casually cover the wet spot with a burp cloth and wait for Greg to get back with our daughter, the Grand Poobah. When he does I tell him what’s going on, and he says, “Go figure,” and kindly hands me a baggie with her spontaneously-combustible pants inside. “We have to tell the flight attendant,” I say, thinking about the person who has to sit in this seat on the next flight. “What if they charge us for the cleaning?” he worries. Can you imagine? $35 for extra leg room. $100 for a poopie seat. Man, these airlines will milk you for anything.
    Still, I’m not a total a-hole so I can’t
not
say something (if my high school English teacher is reading this, she’s totally cringing at that double negative. Take that, Mrs. Meany Pants). So on the way out I whisper to the flight attendant, “You might want to check seat 27F. I think my daughter’s diaper leaked a little.” So the flight attendant is like, “Sure, buh-bye,” and clearly ignoring me. “No, I’m fucking serious,” I say. Well, I didn’t actually say the word fucking with my mouth, but I said it with my eyes and now she can tell I mean business. “Oh, okay, we definitely will.”
    But I gotta wonder. Why didn’t I smell the poop for so long? I mean the guy behind me was literally getting sick over it. Is it possible I’ve officially changed too many diapers and my nose is broken? Or is it like a Brita pitcher and I need to change the filter or something? I’ll have to go to Bed, Bath and Beyond to see if they carry nose filters. What section would they be in? Definitely not Bed. Bath or Beyond? Woo-hooo, I just remembered I have a 20% off coupon!

Yeah, I fully expect to be senile and smearing poop all over the walls one day. I just hope I’m living with one of my kids when it happens. Payback’s a bitch.

Itty-bitty potty party
    Once when Zoey was little I took her to the bathroom at the zoo, and when we were next in line one of the stalls opened up to reveal an itty-bitty potty just for little girls like her. I swear the angels sang in the heavens when she saw it. She had the most wonderful potty experience ever. Then it was my turn.
    ME: Okay, let’s go find Mommy a potty.
    ZOEY: No Mommy, use this one.
    While I really wanted to find a normal potty for myself, two things went through my head:
    1. You know how that first person