My memory goes back pretty far, to when I was two years old. I may not remember what you said yesterday, but I have some vivid memories of my past and one of them is of my toilet training. As always, my mother didn’t read Dr. Spock when it came to parenting. She always had her own unique and sometimes unorthodox style of handling various situations. This is one of them. I am going to share it with the world!
My mother got married late in life. She was 36 years old when she married and had me when she was 38. She already lost what little patience she might have had and her biological clock was ticking away. She got pregnant with my brother before I was two and was due to have him when I was two and a half. Back then there were no Pampers, just those cloth diapers that you had to wash. There was just no way my mother was going to wash diapers for two! She made up her mind that I should be toilet trained before my brother got here and she made sure it happened.
One day she takes me into the bathroom and sits me on the huge toilet and tells me to make “poop” or whatever she called it back then. Now, mind you, she didn’t buy a cover for the toilet seat to make the hole smaller or get me a little step stool so my feet could feel something solid under them. You have no idea how high up a toilet seat is or how big the hole seems to a petite two year old girl. I might as well have been sitting over the Grand Canyon as scared as I was. But, I knew enough not to complain. I was a smart toddler. I was so frightened sitting there, half in the hole with my feet dangling, not knowing what to do. So, I held on to the sink with my right hand and to the hamper with my left hand, for dear life, and just sat there. It seemed I sat there for a very long time. It’s kind of hard to get motivated to “go” when you are a bit terrified of falling down a hole. I didn’t want to get flushed down the toilet if I fell in! That's all I could think of. So I sat there. My mother would check on me every once in a while to see how I was holding up. Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity, I complied with my mother’s “on demand” request, and she was very pleased at the results. I was relieved to get off the “hot” or “cold” seat, depending how you look at it. I couldn’t wait to put that traumatic experience behind me. Goes to show you how little I knew…
My mother put a little pair of white underwear on me. She smiled a big smile and told me, “Now you are a BIG girl! You tell me when you have to make #1 or #2, so you can use the toilet. And, if you ever go in your underwear again, I’ll kill you.”
As far as my memory serves me, I was toilet trained from that day on, so help me God. Mission accomplished!
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