The other day, my wife finally convinced me to buy a new Honda Odyssey. This is something I have been trying to avoid for almost two years now. For one thing, our previous car was perfectly fine if you ignore the fact that it had this obnoxious habit of breaking down in McDonald’s parking lots. From my standpoint, this was actually the car’s way of telling us that we should never be eating at McDonald’s. And so, my argument for keeping the car was the simple fact that it was clearly a long lost descendant of Herby the Beetle and if we just waited long enough it might just start talking to us and doing all sorts of amazing tricks.
Now, all of this blather was really just an ill-conceived ruse to prevent adding yet another monthly payment to our already strained finances. I was actually surprised at how long it worked when you consider that the notion of anthropomorphic cars is inherently illogical, despite the fact that they make great movies.
Anyway, I eventually had to concede that cars can’t think for themselves or talk, and if they could do either of these things they probably wouldn’t object to fast food as a general concept, and so we decided to buy a spiffy new Honda Odyssey despite the fact that my wife really wanted a GMC Yukon, which is only slightly larger than a U.S. battle destroyer but capable of consuming about as much gas.
The Sunday before we were due to return our old car, my wife (who basically rules my “out of work” time with an iron fist and a kind heart) decided that a great Sunday activity would be for my three year old son Declan and I to clean out the car.
Now this particular suggestion didn’t seem to ME like a great way to spend a Sunday, for some obvious and other not-so obvious reasons.
For one thing, cars that have been inhabited by children for any more than a couple of months slowly become their own self-sustaining ecosystem, whereby the discarded gummy bears, mangled French fries and half-eaten lollipops actually begin to mutate into a kind of primordial ooze. In other words, it’s just freaking gross in there and I’m absolutely certain that there are viruses in there that could unleash major damage on the human population if allowed to escape.
And for another, it’s hard (but not impossible) to watch football and clean out a car at the same time, especially if you’re trying to do a good job of either task. We all know that watching football takes dedication and focus if you want to do it right and should not be taken lightly.
But I am a loving and dedicated husband and so I found myself in the back of our car with my three year old son Declan trying to pry lollipops off the floor.
At one point, Declan discovered a Munchkin lodged way back underneath the third row of seats and was able to dig it out with his tiny Toddler fingers. There is no telling how long that Munchkin had been there – for all I know, it could have been purchased on the day we bought the car five years ago. I’m sure we could have used some sort of cool high tech process like carbon dating to figure it out but alas, there is no way to know for sure.
At the time Declan discovered this morsel, I was scrounging around in the second row of seats trying my hardest to scrape what appeared to be three year old bugger snot off the leather seats. I looked up to see Declan examining a little round ball of dough (Exhibit A: “The Munchkin”) with a huge smile on his face, almost as if he had discovered the one and only ring to rule them all (please excuse the Lord Of The Rings reference).
Really, though, it would be hard for me to overstate the extent to which he seemed incredibly happy at that moment. I ask you, is there anything more rapturous when you’re 3 than finding a donut under the third row seat of your car?
Then something very, ah, unexpected happened.
He ate it.
Just like that. The kid ate the donut.
He ate what may have been a FIVE YEAR OLD donut. Now granted, I can’t vouch 100% that it was a five year old donut but let’s say it was a one year old donut. Does that make the act any less disgusting? Even if it was a 6 month old donut, I wouldn’t wish that fate on Duke, the mean bully who used to beat me mercilessly after school (but that’s another issue altogether).
I blinked several times just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating (maybe the bugger snot had gone to my head). But there was no denying the simple fact that the donut was gone and Declan had a “five year old donut eating grin” on his face. He was pleased, truly please with himself for what he considered to be a major accomplishment.
At this point, there was really nothing else to do, other than to pray that there wasn’t such a thing as ‘donut poisoning” and that his 3 year old digestive system could handle the indignity.
At which point, something entirely unexpected happened yet again.
He peed on the floor.
That’s correct – RIGHT ON THE FLOOR!
The very floor of the car we were about to replace with a shiny new Honda Odyssey. Declan (who was potty training at the time) just decided to let it fly, right down there amongst the discarded onion rings and last year’s goldfish crackers.
Now look, I can’t make this stuff up. That car lasted five years without anyone peeing in it. What are the odds of my three year old son deciding to pee in the car on the day before we are supposed to trade it in?
I don’t know if the five year old donut has anything to do with it. Maybe in his toddler mind this was some bizarre form of celebration. Maybe the donut itself triggered some sort of chemical reaction – after all I’m sure medical science doesn’t have a lot of information on the effects of five year old munchkins.
All I know is that right now there is a 5 year old minivan driving around New England which has a rather distinctive smell back in the third row. On the positive side, I can safely say that there aren’t any donuts left in the back seat thanks to the donut chompin’, back seat peeing toddler known as Declan.
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