I didn't know Mommies pooped...

I may have mentioned before that I have crazy, long term memory… like on par with elephants. In some cases, I remember complete experiences and can not only visualize them but also remember the sounds and smells around me at that time. But I also have just these momentary flashes of memory, which are sort of like GIF’s in my head where I don't recall the whole situation but just a single moment. I remember sorting laundry with my mom when I was 2. I remember rocking in my little red rocking chair. I remember yelling from inside my crib when I heard what I thought was my Aunt Sue talking to my grandma in the next room. A funny part of that memory is that, despite my young age, I clearly recall weighing the risk of yelling for my aunt, because even then I knew her voice sounded so similar to my mom’s that it could go either way. And the accuracy of my, I hoped, discerning ear was the difference between seeing a smile or a frown walk through that bedroom door. (It turned out that my skills needed work; the next thing I knew, I was in trouble). I remember being a little older and seeing my mom step out of the shower and noticing, for the first time, how beautiful her breasts were (sorry, Mom). I wondered if mine would look like that one day (they don’t. I got a different model lol). I remember being very young and seeing my dad walk into the bathroom naked and peeing in the big toilet while I sat on my little potty behind him a few feet. I was sitting there thinking he peed very loudly - like a bucket of water being poured into the toilet from up high. And his butt was awfully hairy. Sadly, throughout the many years when I didn’t have any contact with my dad, I could not make out details of his face in my mind… just a blurry image with dark eyes and dark, shaggy brown hair all around his face. But I still remembered that hairy buttcrack, and I remembered that he was tall and thin. It wasn’t until I was in my early 20’s that I saw him again in person. All the blur was finally filled in with details, and I realized who I had to blame for my premature forehead wrinkles.

In none of my memories… (not. a. single. one…) do I recall having any proof that my mom ever farted. I don’t even think I ever saw her burp. So it’s as though she was gas-less… although I did see the occasional hiccup, so there was that. But never was there the slightest infraction… no chairs making funny noises as she sat on them, no sudden, foul odor that couldn’t be reasonably assigned to the dog under the table with the guilty, shifty eyes… there was nothing. And to top it off, she was so opposed to farts, any mention of them even had to have a cutesy name: “stinker”. Saying “fart” in our house was a major infraction. Even now, if my mom walked into my house and blew it up with the loudest fart on record, I would not believe it came from her. I’d assume that all 4 boys AND Max had farted simultaneously just behind her.

Fast forward 30+ years, and you have me, all grown up with a reputation that prompts people to send me memes about industrial grade toilet plungers (ahem, I've received at least 2 this week, and it's only Wednesday). I'm probably not exactly the demure gal my mom imagined she would have one day.  I’m surrounded by little kids, and one evening recently, I finally resolved to give each of the boys a much needed haircut.  I went into the bathroom to get it ready for my first customer: Javibear. Unlike my own fart-proof mom, I had some gas after my dinner of carnitas nachos, so I decided I better let a fart go before I called him in there… because, yes, I fart like anyone else (excluding my mom, of course), but I have some class and consideration for other people. When I let that one go, I was SO glad I had, because it was particularly rank and even had me wrinkling my own nose. Having just farted literally seconds before, I bent over to get the clippers and scissors out from the cabinet under Jose's sink. Just as I did - literally a split second later -  Javi ran up behind me and hugged me, his face planted right on my butt… he’d had some momentum running into me, so I have this notion that his nose was actually pressed into me when he first made contact (let's all cringe together: 1, 2, 3...). He immediately jerked backwards, adjusting his glasses and telling me with a bit of a loud whine, “You smell like you pooped your pants!"  I went from staring at him with a concerned face to busting out laughing. I laughed harder than I had in a long time. The tears-streaming-down-my-face kind of laugh, the I-can’t-breathe-or-talk kind of laugh, and I realized that I had completely shattered any chance of my own kids thinking I ever had some sort of fart-proof attribute.  
Sometimes I hope my kids have very clear long-term memories like I did when they grow up, and they can remember the fun experiences we all had together, all the laughing, all the stories, all the special times. And then I think about their GIF’s in their own minds as 30 and 40 year old men, and I’m not so sure I want them to be looking at me in their mind's eye, on the toilet, plugging their noses while they say to me, “I never knew mommies pooped”, “I never knew mommies pooped” over and over until they move on to the next GIF in their memory bank… will it be them asking me if I’m the only mommy who farts while I’m wearing my “I’m sorry” face, or will it be the sweeter memory of them taking deep breaths of my hair or my shirt while we snuggle on the couch, telling me I smell good and asking me how I’m always so warm when they’re cold? How come I don’t get to choose which videos and GIF’s will be stuck in their memories until the end of time? Whatever they remember, at least they won’t have any hairy buttcrack memories of me. I’m good there… and thankful for small mercies.

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