Last week, my wife decided to have an emergency appendectomy.
Okay, “decided” isn’t really the right word. And technically, the appendectomy was this week, but the whole ordeal started last week. It’s a long story, but that’s not what I’m here to tell you about today. Today’s story is about a circumstance that only occurred because she had surgery.
On Friday, two days after my wife got out of the hospital, I had a vasectomy performed. Knowing full well that we would both be unable to lift anything, sprint after children, or be generally capable of more than lounging for a couple days, we smartly stayed home and did nothing.
Shortly before dinner, my wife decided she wanted ice cream—in her words, as a “reward for doing nothing all day and taking a nap”—so we decided to go to Sonic for treats after dinner. We loaded up the toddler, my daughter, and ourselves into the car to go get her “reward”.
While waiting for our ice cream, my toddler declared, “I have to go potty.” My wife, chuckled at the timing and said, “You’ll have to hold it.”
As expected, my youngest would have none of it. “I’m going to potty my seat!” came the urgent reply from the backseat.
My wife and I shared a glance. “There are some trees over there.” She tilted her head toward the opposite edge of the parking lot. I reached into my shorts to remove the bag of peas cradling my business and handed them to her. I could only imagine how it would look if I crossed the parking lot escorting my toddler with one hand, the other holding my crotch. “Hold my peas,” I requested and climbed out of the driver’s seat.
(In hindsight, I should have said, “Hold my pee peas,” but I didn’t. If you want, you can pretend that I did, since it makes me sound funnier.)
I opened the back door of the car to let my barefoot, shirtless toddler—whose chest was covered in face paint depicting a snowman—climb down from the backseat. I couldn’t lift him for at least another day, so we walked hand-in-hand across the asphalt to the bushes. He did his business with the steadfast determination of a 3-year-old that has been told he should single-handedly water all the trees in the world. Meanwhile, I’m looking around to make sure we’re not being filmed and no one is calling the police.
Mission accomplished, we begin the steady trek back to the car. He climbs back into his seat and his sister buckles him back in. All the while, Autumn is struggling to breathe and holding her incisions as tight as she dares as silent laughter rolls over her. for a brief moment, I thought we might be returning to the hospital to have her surgical glue reapplied, but she managed to recover before that bill became necessary.
So, yeah… if you’d like to know how my June is going, I hope this provides some much needed clarification.
