TMI About the BM (Sorry, Grandma)

Still blogging away alongside three other talented bloggers.  Each week, one of us chooses a topic and we all post a blog entry on that topic, usually on Thursdays.  (Usually we are on time.  Usually.  Ok, sometimes.)

Here are the links to the other fabulous blogs:

Merryland Girl

Froggie 

Moma Rock

This week, Moma Rock chose and she said, simply, “Poop.”

            My first reaction to the topic was, “Whaa – ??”  And my next was, “Ugh.”

            I don’t like to talk about poop.  I’m fairly open to talking about almost any subject, including those involving the body, but I’m not and never have been comfortable talking about certain bodily functions of which poop is a part.  Even writing this is making me all itchy.  After Moma Rock suggested the topic, she and Merryland Girl began discussing it (we communicate over Messenger, since we are spread across the country).  I cringed.  I read their comments but I didn’t say much.  I just don’t like talking about poop!

           

            To the contrary, my husband loves talking about it.  It’s a constant source of irritation to me – I mean, TMI, buddy!  (I once read that couples should never use the bathroom when the other is in the room, and I wholeheartedly agree.)  I don’t want to know what goes on in the bathroom when I’m not there (and I don’t want to be there to find out).  Why would I?  I suppose the only exception is when one of the kids is sick, but even then I don’t really want to get into much detail.  Just the basics, ma’am.

            I think my avoidance of this topic comes from how I was raised.  My Dad is the least stereotypical male I know.  He was raised by a somewhat proper mother – my Grandma – and poop simply was not a topic for polite conversation.  (Once, my Grandma asked me if I’d had a “BM” and I had no idea what she was talking about.  My Mom had to tell me.  Look it up.)  My Grandma’s rules stuck with my Dad, and we didn’t discuss such things in my childhood home.  To this day, my Dad grows uncomfortable if the conversation turns toward the down and dirty side.  And I cringe with him.

            You’d think having three kids would have changed that, but it hasn’t.  I discourage poop (and fart and pee) talk (though my husband encourages it).  I urge the younger girls to say, “I have to use the bathroom,” and not name the exact reason why.  I don’t need to know.  I really don’t. 

            I know I’m not alone in my dislike of poop talk.  Everyone’s tolerance is a little different.  The other day, I stood at the kids’ bus stop talking to another mom, who had her four-old-son with her.  He came up and said, “I have to go pee pee.”  I laughed as she literally squirmed.  “It’s pee,” she said.  “Just say, ‘pee.’  You don’t need to say ‘pee pee.’”  For her own reasons, she was ok with the single-word description, but not the double.  In a slightly different quirk, I used to work with someone who became a friend, and quickly learned that she is not a bathroom stall talker, meaning we could talk as we went into the bathroom, but the second the stall door closed, she wanted no conversation.  Once she came out, conversation was again ok.  I don’t mind talking through the stall, but I always respected her feelings.  Who am I to say her quirk was any quirkier than my own?

            As I write this, I’m silently dreading reading my co-bloggers’ poop posts.  I’m curious why Moma Rock chose this topic, and I’m sure she reveals it in her post, but then again, I kinda don’t want to know.  Some things are better left to the imagination. 

            Or not.  Definitely not.