The Port-o-Potty Incident...

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Kids are here to embarrass us. Let's make the most of it."--Unknown.

So Things Two and Three have TBall/Baseball games/practices two nights a week. No big deal.

Until Last Night.

Hubby had to work late, so I took the kids by myself. Thing Three has T-ball from 6:05-7:05 and Thing Two has baseball from 7:10 to 8:10. The baseball field is at an elementary school. There aren't any places to go to the bathroom, except for one"Port-o-Potty" at the edge of the fence where the parking lot is.

So, since it's a school, there's a big park one field over, with playground equipment, and since I had all the kids with me I set up our chairs, checked snacks and water, and sent Thing Three to the field and the other Things to the park with their friends.

After about half an hour, Thing Two (my seven-year old) comes and sits by me and tells me that he needs to go to the bathroom. I look at him, lower my sunglasses and tell him there is no bathroom. Then I remember the Port-o-Potty. I tell him to go in there, it's only about 50 feet away from where I'm sitting.
He says "No, Mom, I have to go (number Two). I'm NOT going (number Two) in there!"

Now, before I go further, a little background on Thing Two. He's got a "few" phobias. Two of them, happen to be bad, germy places (a.k.a. the Port-o-Potty) and BUGS.

He tells me that if it's stinky, there's no way he's going to go (number Two) in there. Since I am trying to pay attention to his brother's game, I tell him impatiently to "sniff it" and see if it's passable.

He comes back to me a minute later, relieved. "Mom, it actually smells pretty clean."
"All right!" I say. "Go for it!" He dances off (it must be the Number Two dance) and I am really paying attention to the game now, because Thing Three is almost up to bat.

A few minutes pass. Thing Three is up to bat. I sneak a glance at the Port-o-Potty and there are two girls waiting in line now, and Thing Two is still inside.

I turn my attention back to the game, and Thing Three walks up to the plate, puts on the batting helmet (which, on a five-year old, it looks absurdly like Rick Moranis' Dark Helmet character from Spaceballs) and he takes a swing at the Tee. He actually hits it the first time! No sacrificial swing! In fact, Thing Three is in such SHOCK that he actually hit it, he stands there, staring at the ball as about 20 kids on the opposing team dive for it, and finally he runs (only after his coach taps him on the shoulder) and we're cheering and cheering and I hardly notice out of the corner of my eye that there are parents leaving their seats and running off and finally, when Thing Three steps on Home plate, the cheers die down, and I hear it.

Screaming. Blood-curdling help-me-it's-chopping-off-my-foot screaming. Shrieking. And more screams. More parents leave their seats, and I realize where the screams are coming from.

The Port-o-Potty.

Mortified, I jump up from my seat and run over to the potty, and become increasingly aware that those screams belong to MY kid, and parents are banging on the door to the port-o-potty, asking him what's happening, asking him if he fell in, and I break through the crowd and say "I'm the MOM!" and they part for me and when I get to the Port-o-Potty door the little girls are sobbing and saying that he's been screaming bloody murder and he's being killed, and I calmly put my face to the door and whisper Thing Two's name.

"What's wrong, Honey. Mom's here."

He unlocks the door from the inside and I open it to see him, sitting on the seat, curled up into a ball and frantically pointing to the wall opposite him, to the side of the door. I look, thinking it's going to be a tarantula or some bug out of the King Kong movie.

It's a beetle. A tiny beetle. We're talking, grain of rice-sized. I look at the teeny beetle, and I look at Thing Two, shrinking away in abject terror, and I nearly snap.

"IT'S A BUG, YOU SILLY! JUST A BUG! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU???" I want to scream, but since I'm a mom, I don't. I just bring my hand up and smack the unfortunate tiny beetle once, and it dies and falls to the bottom of the port-o-potty. Thing Two winces and starts to cry, from relief.

Mortified to the exponent of Ten, I close the door and look at all the inquiring faces. The little girl looks at me and says: "He was scared of a bug?"

And since I'm a Mom, the ever-protective She-bear, I look at her and say:

"It was a really BIG bug."

She recoils and pretends to be afraid, too, and the parents all burst into giggles of relief. "Everything's OK now," I say, "Sorry about the screaming. It was a really BIG bug." I repeat, and they all troup off, shaking their heads and laughing.

So I wander back to my seat in a fog, wondering WHY I was so "blessed" to have a kid who has a phobia like that, and I wonder how the High School years will go, once it gets out that Thing Two is DEATHLY afraid of even the tiniest bug.
I mean, we're talking abject terror, here, of a bug.

Heaven help us all.