This is one of the more embarrassing memories that I will share with you throughout our journey through my childhood. It all begins in a hardware store where most of our free time with our father was spent. To this day I walk into The Home Depot, smell that weird mixture between wood and the dust of an old warehouse and I instantly feel at home.
Rowen was and still remains a handy man at heart that can fix or make anything that he desires. A real measure twice and only cut once kind of guy, which resulted in so many trips to the hardware store that we felt comfortable enough to do anything and everything there. In fact, one of my fondest memories is of The Home Depot’s door aisle. When we were kids these door aisles had doors that opened into a corridor filled with other doors! A place where you could run through a finely crafted pair of French doors, run down the rack, and pop out of an old mission style door. These doors gave you the illusion of popping into and out of other worlds and it was one of my favorite games as a kid. When our father would finally would come looking for us he would ask an attendant close by who would usually sigh and say, “Did you check the door aisle?” This poor attendant probably hated this job and was only working there to pay for college or gas money but every few days he or she would have to explain to Rowen where his children had run off too.
Once our father meandered down the door aisle we would then play the hide from Rowen game where he would call our names and continuously open the doors right next to our doors. As you can imagine this was great fun for us but probably an awful spectacle and slightly embarrassing for our poor father who could not keep his two girls from running off and playing in the hardware store.
As a result of our poor behavior in Home Depot Rowen started taking us to more local hardware stores where it was harder for us to hide and play. In the meantime this allowed him to examine lug nuts, screws, sink heads and whatever useful tools we didn’t comprehend, to his hearts content. However, the bathrooms in these smaller establishments were not very well marked and at five years old I was not too keen on asking where the bathrooms could possibly be.
I remember the situation vividly we had just gotten back from some place where they sold bark, sand, stones, and other materials that they kept in gargantuan piles. These piles had to be more than 500 feet high and while my father was talking to the manager and walking the grounds Ophelia and I were ascending the piles only to slide down them. This was awesome until Rowen finally caught on to what we were doing. Needless to say he was not pleased with us and especially not me because I was wearing a new white t-shirt with the Disney’s 101 Dalmatian characters on it and new leggings that had purple, yellow, green, and red Dalmatian paw prints on them. As you can probably guess my shirt was not as bleach white as it once had been and my dad was tired of telling us not to get into trouble.
After this adventure ended there was a long car ride to one of those aforementioned local hardware stores with the poorly marked bathrooms. Rowen was quiet on the car ride there and mad enough that he turned off the radio and made us sit in silence in his baby blue pick up truck the whole way there. I am sure that he was thinking he couldn’t take his five and eight year old anywhere without them causing some type of trouble when all he really wanted was to compare prices on some parts and look at mounds of bark, sand, and stone. However, I had to use to the restroom badly for a while now and it finally approached a critical level if you know what I mean.
I approached Ophelia first because I was hoping perhaps she had seen or knew of the allusive bathrooms for which I was in need. However, she was mad at me for getting us both in trouble and equally as scared of interrupting our father who was talking with the store clerk about the prices or even the size of some tool or screw he was interested in. Only our father could go to five or six different hardware stores to compare prices and purchase something as small as a screw for the best deal in town. I was equally as terrified of Rowen as Ophelia was but I tugged on his nice button up shirt with stripes on it to get his attention. Rowen is not a small man by any means as he is six feet tall with bright blonde hair, a blonde beard and mustache that cleverly disguises his expressions whether they be happy, sad, or angry, and piercing ice blue eyes. He was still talking to the clerk so I gave him a second tug of the shirt and he looked down on me from on high and said,
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“What?” impregnating the air around him with exasperation. To which I tentatively responded,
“…I need to use the bathroom.”
Clearly irritated Rowen looked at me and said,
“Your older sister can help you with that.”
Little did he know that my older sister was not the slightest bit interested in helping me with finding the restroom. I asked Ophelia a second time hoping that she could hear the desperation in my voice, to which she responded,
“Just ask somebody who works here.”
Keep in mind that I am five years old and I have had to poop for about an hour now. Not only am I incredibly shy about asking these large mountain men in the hardware store where the restroom is but this is the age of stranger danger. I cannot believe that Ophelia and Rowen are just fine with me asking some random person where the restroom is. However, we are reaching the point of no return and I approach someone who looks like they might know where the restroom is only to chicken out and not ask them at all. Looking back I realize that the person I was about to ask did not work there at all and for some reason I couldn’t find anyone else. Why couldn’t the clerk answering Rowen’s questions have said, “The bathrooms are right over there.” He heard me ask the question!
At this point I am desperate I start wandering around the end of the aisles looking for the restroom frantically but no such luck. Thinking back on it they probably didn’t have a public restroom and it was behind those strange clear floppy things that acted as a door between the front and the stocked supplies in the back. So I find a shed in the middle of the store and I think to myself maybe I can just poop in there. But what if someone walks in while I’m committing this unspeakable act? Also, I know that this would be rude and someone would have to clean it up later and surely they would know it was me, call my parents and that would be the end for me. So I do the only thing I know how to do at five years old… I hide behind the shed and proceed to poop in my new leggings.
Lucky for me my poops don’t tend to smell too terrible; however, I now have one of the biggest logs of my life in my leggings. I approach Ophelia who is standing five feet away from our dad trying to appear invisible and let his irritation with us subside. As I approach Ophelia like the good older sibling she is she says,
“Did you find the bathroom?” I sheepishly reply,
“No. I don’t need it anymore.”
The look Ophelia gives me is a strange one but she doesn’t pursue the conversation any further she just goes back to trying to blend in with the key chains on the wall behind her. I, however, fully aware of all of the horrible things that have happened am attempting to keep my butt as far away from view as possible because we all know leggings are pretty unforgiving and I don’t want anyone to see the giant lumps where only my butt once was.
Rowen finally purchases whatever piece of equipment he needs and we all walk out of the store in succession: Rowen, Ophelia, the logs and I. Ophelia seems to think this is weird because I normally walk right next to her but she doesn’t say anything. She throws a small fit about having to sit in the middle seat of the truck because as the smallest that is where I should be sitting. However, I intend to hide the fact that I just pooped myself and now have to sit in my own defecation the whole drive home. This was honestly punishment enough for the crime that I had committed.
When we finally arrive home I rush to use the bathroom where I attempt to fix the whole situation. My underwear is ruined and it has to be thrown away and unfortunately my poop has stained my new leggings. While we were far from poor I knew that my parents worked hard to provide these clothes for me and I couldn’t just ruin them like this. So I decided to let Ophelia in on my secret. After recovering from her raucous laughter I asked her to tell Rowen for me and frankly her answer was a solid “No. You’re the one who pooped your pants so you tell him!”
My fate was sealed and so I came clean to Rowen who made me hop in the shower while he attempted to scrub my poop out of my new leggings before tossing them in the washing machine. Oh the things our parents do for love. At the time I was absolutely mortified and hurt as Rowen lectured me about how I better never have an accident like this again. At the age of five I should apparently have complete control of my bladder and bowels and any more offenses would have consequences. To make matters worse when Genevieve came home she sat on my bed and without warning said, “I heard about your accident today.” Did everyone in my family have to know about the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to me in my short years on Earth? Apparently. So in short never trust your parents when they say “Your older sister can help you with that.” because frankly she was of no help at all on that day.