He walked over to the hot tub and sat down on the first step. By then, I was so eager to end the standoff that I turned to the lifeguard and was like, “That’s okay, right?” After all, it was just one step. Witches don’t come flying in until full submersion, right? The lifeguard was down with it. I breathed easy.
Then the boy took another step down. Now he was up to his knees in the water. I turned to the lifeguard for approval and he shook his head. One step was okay. Two steps? PRISON. I gently told my son that he had to scoot back up one step.
“NnnnnnnnnnnnnO!”
“Just go up one step and we’ll be okay.”
“Nnnnnnn—”
“Don’t say it.”
“—nnnnnO!”
“Why don’t we forget the hot tub and get pancakes?”
“No. I wand hoddub.”
Somehow I always ended up in these kind of situations when parenting. Don’t take two steps into the hot tub. Please only eat half that banana. You can watch TV for twelve more minutes but not thirteen. Children are like very small terrorists: You cannot negotiate with them.
My son got up and began making quick little steps up and down. That was his “I have to pee” dance, and it never ceased to put me into panic mode. I became terrified that piss would come exploding out of all of his orifices if I didn’t get him to a nearby toilet. So I looked at him and asked him, out loud . . .
“Oh, do you have to pee?”
Never say this to a child out loud at a public pool. Ever. You have to be a fucking moron to announce to everyone that your child is about to urinate in the pool, and I apparently was dumb enough to qualify. Everyone heard me. The lifeguard heard me. The other family heard me. For all I know, the lifeguard was already contacting the police.
Then my mom chimed in, “Oh, you need to get him out of the hot tub, Drew.”
“I know, Mom.”
“He can’t just pee in there.”
“I KNOW!”
I begged my son to get out of the hot tub and he stood his ground. I considered picking him up and bringing him to the bathroom by force, but my son did not take kindly to forced bathroom trips. If you picked him up when he didn’t want to be picked up, he became possessed by Satan and began thrashing about while speaking in ancient Aramaic. So with everyone at the pool staring daggers at me, I begged the boy to exit the hot tub.
“Please, man. You need to get out and go potty.”
“NnnnnnnnnnnnnO!”
“I’ll give you a thousand dollars.”
But it was too late. My son stopped his little quick steps, and I could see the yellow legs of urine streaming down his inner thigh. Everyone watching knew what had happened, so I had no choice. I picked up my son mid-piss and he predictably began trying to claw my face off. I wasn’t gonna be able to carry the demon child all the way to the pisser, so I set him down in a far corner of the pool area, on the tile floor, and let him finish there. As if no one would know what I was doing.
“You can’t just let him pee on the floor.”
“Shut up, Mom.”
Everyone was still staring while my son made a little puddle around himself. There was a stack of complimentary towels nearby and I grabbed three of them to soak up the piss, which surely violated hotel pool towel etiquette. Those things were not meant to be piss sponges. All the while, I avoided the lifeguard’s gaze.
The other family got out of the pool and fled, and that pissed me off. Those hypocrites, I thought. When you go into a public pool, you tacitly agree to the fact that you will be bathing in ten thousand gallons of chlorinated urine. I wouldn’t have sold out another parent like that. But this family left, trying to paint my boy as a common pool-pissing thug, which was bullshit.
I finished cleaning up the piss and my son demanded to go back in the hot tub. I didn’t want to stay there a second longer. We had already been branded with the scarlet P. I didn’t want to bring my son back into the hot tub with that lifeguard still there. But the boy was stubborn, and I was a sap, so back into the tub he went.
It was unbearable. I could feel the lifeguard’s eyes on me. I wanted to get away from all this as fast as possible and settle down with a Dutch Baby at the Original Pancake House. I didn’t want to be trapped in this Victorian pissing drama a second longer. I grabbed my son.
“We have to leave.”
“NnnnnnnnnnnnnO!”
“I’ll let you push every button on the elevator.”
“Oat-kay!”
Out of the pool he sprung. I quickly toweled him off, grabbed my daughter, and headed for the exit with my folks, who said nothing. On the way, I put on my best face and said to the lifeguard, “Thank you!”
He said nothing back.
Then my son said, “Deddy, I peed in da hoddub!”
And I nudged him out the door.
THE CREEK AND THE COFFEE CUP