I wish going potty in the toilet was an instinct that babies were born with... you know, like sucking? And that thing they do when they feel like they're falling? Or the knee jerking?
So yeah, we're trying to potty train the almost 3 year old and it's not going so well. I think he's hella confused cuz he wears big boy underwear at preschool but when he gets home, his parents are too lazy so they put a diaper on him.
I thought I'd take this opportunity to embarrass myself by sharing am embarrassing story about myself.
Once, when I was in second grade, I was walking home from school (in Korea) and I had to go pee, but I wasn't home yet. I tried to hold it but I couldn't... so I wet my pants. At the time, I was living with my jak eun umma (=small mom = little aunt = my dad's younger brother's wife) and her family. I didn't want to get in trouble so I hid the pants and underwear behind the hamper (a big ol' rubber tub thing). Of course, she found it and scolded me anyway.
Another time, when I was younger, I wet the bed at night and in the morning, my mom (I think it was her but I'm not 100% sure because I was really young) made me wear this on my head:
It's the "instrument" at the very left that they used to use to toss grain so that the stuff that they didn't want would fly away.
Anyway, I had to wear it on my head and then go around the neighborhood, asking for salt.
It was totally totally humiliating. Apparently, it was what they made bad-children-who-wet-their-bed do, in order to shame them into stopping. It didn't work with me. My mom accused me of being too lazy to get out of bed. Which totally didn't make sense even to my toddler brain because I would have rather gotten out of bed 10 times than wear that thing and go around asking for salt. What also sucks is the fact that when I got older (like in my 20's) my mom told me that SHE wet the bed until she was older and so did her mom! Seems like it was genetic to me. (Is that even scientific?)
Did anyone else have to do this humiliating punishment?
(gross stuff warning ahead)
The toilet at our house was basically a very deep hole in the concrete floor in a little stall on one side of the courtyard of our house. I remember having to use newspaper to wipe myself. The trick was to crumple the paper and then smooth it out and do that over and over again so that the paper would get soft... as soft as newspaper can get that is. There were also huge rats down there, that would go through the #2s... Gross, I know. At night, I would either have to use a flashlight or build myself a little fire with matches and bits of paper.
Every once in a while, the poop truck would come and suck out all the poop through this big hose. Yeah, it was VERY gross. You could smell that truck a mile away.
Um... how did this post get hijacked by poop?
It must be because I'm tired...
And another memory I have is of chasing the DDT fumes. Men would come and spray DDT (pesticide) everywhere with these huge machines and all the town children would chase them around. It's a miracle that I graduate from college yo... since those things are known to decrease the IQ and all...
- Mary
