THE BAD BRAIN

My brain is my enemy.
It was Sunday afternoon and I had been playing Mr. Mom to my one year old daughter Vivienne since Wednesday. I hadn’t had any real adult conversation in five days and the only reading I had done consisted of; Gentle Giraffe Storybook, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and On the Day You were Born.
On the plus side, I could now recite Goodnight Moon both forwards and backwards.
Vivienne had awakened from her nap with a diaper full of pee and poop, which I cleaned up lickety split. But not fifteen minutes later I detected a disturbing odor surrounding the girl, and, not believing she could have so quickly done the deed again, pulled open the back of her diaper and peered in.
Hmm, nothing here, Sherlock.
Still, something didn’t smell right and so I stuck my finger down into the diaper to pull it further from her little round butt.
And that is when I got a finger pull of warm poop.
Yelping like I’d been stung by a bee, I leapt to my feet and raced to the kitchen sink, where I frantically scrubbed the offending substance from my hand. After drying off I picked up the smelly little knucklehead, slung her over my shoulder and went into my studio, where we keep our downstairs changing table.
I set out once again on the seemingly endless Trail of the Diaper Change. Once you start down it, pardner, there ain’t no turning back.
I took off her pants, undid the diaper and………..
Holy Shit!!
The size and complexion of this BM rocked my world so thoroughly that for the briefest of moments I lost my wits and just stared at it with something like admiration. And that was all it took for the little wiggle-worm to spin sideways and threaten to topple right off the table. I made a desperate grab and hauled her back up, wheezing with relief.
Only to find that now she had thrust both feet squarely in her own stool. With a squeal of ardor-filled glee she wiggled her feet back and forth.
“Daddy, this is so much fun,” her smile seemed to be saying. “You should try it too!”
Too late I grabbed both her ankles with my left hand while removing the offending diaper with my right. But in my haste my grip slipped and her left leg came clear. She immediately seized her foot and pulled it towards her mouth. I just as quickly lurched forward and grabbed it right back, and felt my suspect lower back give a small stab of pain. Portent of lumbar troubles later, I knew, and felt a small part of my inner resolve begin to crumble.
So, just to recap the score; crap on my hands, crap on my daughter's hands and feet, and a grown man beginning to come apart at the seams.
I don’t think I'd arrived at crying just yet, but I was starting to round the bend.
With her left hand Vivienne reached over and grabbed a Pamper diaper from the top of the stack. She raised it in front of her face and, after studying it with a surpassingly serious expression, tossed it on the floor as if it did not meet her lofty standards.
“Please don’t do that,” I said.
Vivienne grabbed another diaper and repeated the trick.
“Please, please, don’t do that.”
She did it again and then looked right at me with a haughty expression that seemed to portend a look I would be getting twelve years hence, when she hit puberty. “Oh, I am sorry,” the snooty look said, “Did you say something?”
It was then that the Bad Brain began to attack. A tiny, whispery voice – with the merest suggestion of a frown – asked, “Jeffrey, just what the hell are you doing here? How did you come to this?”
I took a moment to gather my faculties and noted a certain sliminess under my left hand. I checked just to make sure, and, yes, I had crap on my hands for the second time in this rapidly disintegrating day.
I think this is when I first began to weep.
At this sign of weakness the Bad Brain began to speak in earnest. “You used to be somebody,” it said, now sounding disturbingly like Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront. “Every morning you used to tie an immaculate knot in an Italian silk tie you bought in that little shop by the Duomo in Milano, and then you’d put on your power suit and go to your high-paying job and lunch with Wall St. power brokers and advise CEO’s…………..and, pardon me if I’ve mistaken you, but didn’t you used to be someone who mattered?”
Unperturbed by my inner dialogue, my daughter continued to rain Pampers on the floor; a small mountain of white diapers grew at my feet. She began to sing her nonsense song that sounds like the characters in Farewell My Concubine singing Chinese opera; each syllable seeming to end on a questioning, upward, lilt.
Sadly, this song did not reassure me and the Bad Brain continued its assault; “Man, who are you kidding? You can’t do this. I mean, seriously, Dude, look at you; standing here crying with a hand full of shit.”
And this nugget, “You used to make money. A real man makes a lot of money; he doesn’t spend his day changing shitty diapers.”
Holding my daughters be-shitted feet with my equally fouled hands, I hung my head in resignation as the familiar refrain of the Bad Brain began to thrum inside my head like the drumbeat accompanying the legions of Napoleon’s doomed army as they set off to conquer Russia.
“You know,” the Bad Brain said. And its tone was all sweet reasonableness now. “After the crappy day you’ve had, you really deserve a drink.”
And the world began to fall away.