Steve Canavan: Be prepared for disaster even on trip to the park

Rarely have I received such disgusted looks than I did the other day.
Taking a young child to the park? Better not leave home without one of these...                                                   Picture ShutterstockTaking a young child to the park? Better not leave home without one of these...                                                   Picture Shutterstock
Taking a young child to the park? Better not leave home without one of these... Picture Shutterstock

I was at the park with Mary. If you’ve read this column for the last couple of months you’ll know this is a daily occurrence because, let’s face it, there are very few other places in lockdown to take a three-year-old.

At first I loved it. We live close to a very picturesque park, designed in the 1800s by someone vaguely famous, which features a fountain, a pond where swans and ducks congregate, and beautifully manicured gardens and flowers. But no matter how lovely something is, when you visit it for 84 days in a row it does start to get a tad tiresome. I mean Machu Picchu’s stunning, but if one had to go every day for months on end I daresay we’d wake one morning and sigh, ‘oh for god’s sake, do we really have to go that bloody place again? I’m staying home and watching Pointless’.

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Anyway we were doing our usual tour of the park, my daughter whizzing ahead on her scooter, me sprinting to try to keep up with her and, whenever someone else came towards us, shouting, ‘stay on the left side of the path Mary’. (I think I’ve gone a bit overboard on the whole social distancing thing – every time she spies someone, she screams at the top of her voice ‘daddy, someone’s coming, they might have the virus, HIDE!’ It’s highly embarrassing, although on the upside she hasn’t come down with coronavirus yet, so at least her paranoia is proving an effective vaccine).

Anyway we reached the statue where we play the statue game – I have to stand stock still in a weird pose while she pretends to admire this ‘new’ statue that has appeared.

So I stood on one leg and pointed to the sky and waited for her to arrive. She got fairly close and then stopped. I was looking upward – in my statue pose – so didn’t have eye contact with her. The one thing about the statue game is that you can’t move, obviously, so I stood there for at least 30 seconds wondering why she wasn’t coming any nearer.

Eventually – mainly because at this point several people sat on park benches were starting to look at me very oddly and wonder why a man in his 40s was standing on one leg pointing to the sky, as if doing some kind of really weird outdoor yoga – I broke my pose, looked at a strangely quiet and subdued Mary and said, ‘are you okay?’

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She responded with the words every parent dreads to hear when outside and a mile from home … ‘daddy, I’ve done a poo’.

Now I’m aware this is not an unusual thing for parent to have to deal with – but it came as quite a shock because since potty training our daughter about a year ago, she has only had two accidents, both wees in pants, which, you know, is kind of fine.

Never before had she done the other type and I was momentarily at a loss as to what to do.

“Are you sure?” I asked, as if hoping she’d respond, ‘oh actually, my mistake daddy, I’ve not done a poo at all, I just imagined it’.

Instead she replied, ‘yes, I’ve done a poo’.

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As I walked towards her, enabling me to see the back of her trousers, there was no doubting her words, for there was a lump about the size of a large jacket potato in her bottom area. She’d either pooed or had one hell of a terrible abscess.

“Erm, right then, we’d better sort this out,” I said, desperately looking around like a man who’s fallen off a ship and is in the ocean frantically seeing if help is on its way. Alas it wasn’t ... although I suppose it would have been really strange, and worrying, had a member of the public rushed over, rolled up their sleeves, and declared, ‘stand back, I’ll sort this’.

I could think of nothing other to do than, carrying Mary’s scooter in one hand and her in the other (being very careful not to touch her fragile derriere area), head towards a nearby tree on a grassy rise that offered at least a little privacy. Against the trunk – and with several people tucking into their homemade sandwiches on nearby benches – I pulled down her trousers and knickers to discover something so large and horrifically smelling that it was difficult to believe a child of such a small size could produce it.

I frantically searched my pockets and found two tiny sheets of toilet paper I’d bought with me in case I needed to blow my nose.

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Trying very hard not to vomit, I used the toilet paper to scoop the volleyball-sized excrement out of my daughter’s knickers. Fortunately it was quite firm – but I now had to think what to do with what I was holding.

I mean if you can’t leave dog foul in a public place, I’m guessing a human’s probably isn’t going to go down well either.

Fortunately, in a moment which I can only think must have been reward for going to church every Sunday until the age of 12, I discovered in the back pocket of my jeans a sandwich bag containing some biscuits I’d bought for Mary.

Tossing the biscuits aside, I put her poo in the bag, as well as the kickers, which were beyond saving.

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I then - and this was a low moment – had to walk around 40 metres through the park, past at least a dozen people, holding a child’s poo in a transparent sandwich bag, before reaching a bin and plopping (no pun intended) it in.

Those who’d witnessed the incident looked at me like I was the most disgusting specimen they’d ever come across – the kind of look you might give the TV when Michael Gove comes on - but, hey, what’s a man supposed to do? I looked at them in what I hoped was an apologetic manner, said in that fantastically English look-on-the-bright-side kind of way, “beautiful day isn’t it?”, and then dragging Mary behind me, exited the park at some speed.

Since then I have made sure, on our daily outings, to take with me several sheets of kitchen roll, a spare set of child’s undergarments, and a non-transparent bag.

You never know when disaster might strike again.

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