BEAR IN THE BIG BLUE SHITHOUSE

Saturday night.

The Mrs. is leafing through the newspaper when she suddenly bursts out, "Target is open until 10:00 tonight!!!"

"Wow," I said. "I bet the executives at Walmart have called an emergency meeting to decide how to handle such a devious marketing strategy."

"I'm going to go look for stocking stuff," she says putting down the paper and slipping in to her shoes. "We need stocking stuff. What do you want?"

What do I want in my Christmas stocking?

Hell if I know. Sugar's pretty much out of the question. I'd like to make it through Christmas dinner without passing out in a sugar coma.

"Hell if I know," I said.

"Well, I'll be back in an hour," she said. "You guys have fun."

I look at Andrew.

Andrew looks at me.

It's naked time.

While that may sound like something you'd read about on Michael Jackson's secret webpage, it just means Andrew gets to strip down and run around naked. Three year-olds apparently love to be naked.

So within 30 seconds, Andrew is naked and watching his Thomas The Tank Engine DVD intently.

Since I've seen this DVD over a hundred times in the last week I decide to go in the office off the kitchen and get some work done.

So I'm sitting here at the computer working and I see Andrew walk through the kitchen and stop at the work station desk in the kitchen.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

He doesn't answer.

"Andrew, what are you doing?" I ask as I can halfway see him scrambling through the bills on the desk, finally picking one and then running away.

Keep in mind, I've got an odd kid. He marches to the beat of a one-armed pianist.

But he was really acting odd here.

So I get up to go see why the kid needed a bill.

Oh.

Well there ya go.

My son has shit all over the carpet in the den and is trying to clean it up with an envelope.

Please, if you misunderstand me and think "Uncle Bob's son pooped in the den," I want you to listen to me closely so there's no mistaking what I'm trying to say here.

My. Son. Shit. Alllllllll. Over. The. Fucking. Den.

Apparently, he had to go to the bathroom and rather than use the potty that was in the bathroom, he decided to just shit all over the fucking den so he didn't miss a single second of Thomas the Tank Engine even though he knows the DVD by heart.

After shitting all over the fucking den, Andrew quickly understood the errors of his ways and knew he must clean the shit up.

Apparently he originally thought that the best way to do this was to roll around in the shit, covering his body with the shit and then voila! Shit is off the floor!

No.

Shit is now smeared all over the carpet and my naked son.

I get a quick flashback of the days when Pervy used to come over to the house on Monday nights and some of the photos I'd catch the kid looking at on the computer.

I quickly chase the flashback out of my head.

Now ... I have to decide what to do first in this situation.

On the one hand, I've got a naked three year-old with shit on his face, shit on his hands, shit on his arms, shit on his chest, shit on his back and legs and feet that are covered in shit. Do I clean him up first?

Or do I work fast to remove the massive amounts of shit stains from the $3,000 carpet before they sink into my carpet and are never able to be removed?

While I'm standing there pondering the situation, Andrew has taken off and is heading for the sofa to jump on it for kicks.

"Clean the boy," a voice in my head says.

"But what about the carpet?" I ask the voice.

"Two words: Stanley Steemer, you moron," it answers.

I snatch the kid up off the floor where he's just left several more shitty footprints and sweep him into his bathroom.

I stand him up in the sink.

"Don't move," I said. "And don't touch anything. I'll be RIGHT. BACK."

Andrew stands there, naked and covered in shit in the sink. He gets the feeling that something's up.

I dash into his room and get his diaper wipes.

I get back to the bathroom. Andrew's smearing his feces onto the mirror.

I am the father of a monkey.

"DON'T DO THAT!" I say while I start to scoop shit off my son with the diaper wipes.

We then had a long father-son conversation about the importance of telling me when you need to use the potty and Mommy's at Target buying stocking stuff.

Andrew pretended to listen but he was really into checking out his shit-covered naked body in the mirror.

I got him cleaned up to the point where I thought I had gotten all the errant shit off of him.

I then go get the hand-held shampoo thing whose name brand and official name escape me at the moment. The Black and Decker Shit Sucker Upper. I dunno. Something like that.

I realize that there still some hefty chunks that Andrew wasn't able to successfully smear into the carpet.

So I run to the kitchen to get some paper towels.

I come back and Andrew is now sitting dutifully on the sofa watching Thomas.

I'm not exactly sure how clean I just got his ass.

But I had a feeling I did not want him sitting on the sofa at this moment.

"Andrew! Off the sofa!" I barked.

Yeah.

Like he's going to reeeeeeally listen to me at this point. I'm on my hands and knees scooping up shit ... that alone just ooooozes authority.

I manage to get the kid off the sofa, clean up a good portion of the poop and get the kid in the bathtub.

Susie comes home where Andrew's in the bathtub, I'm sitting in the middle of the bathroom floor in a shirt that's covered in shit and it looks like the Manson family has paid a festive holiday visit in the den.

"Wha' hoppen?" she asks, doing her worst Fred Willard impersonation.

"Andrew has lost all naked time privileges," I said through gritted teeth. "He is not to be trusted naked with overflowing bowels."

I think she felt guilty for leaving us alone while Daddy spent 20 minutes cleaning up poopy.

At least ... I hope she felt guilty.