5 Minute Freewrite: Toilet

Potty training a toddler has some surprising side effects. As a means of distracting my boy while waiting for the often hoped-for plop-plops of success, I have been reading him every and any children’s book that we have in the house.

Over.

And.

Over.

I have probably spent more time with Two Hippos Up On Sticks and Giraffes Don’t Dance than the people who wrote and illustrated them. This has led to some long, thoughtful philosophizing on the nature of the characters I have spent such a long time with, crouching beside the toilet, waiting for my son to do what he does anywhere else.

Why, Gerald the Giraffe, why are you dancing disco in the middle of the forest, and not bashing other males with your head-knobs like a normal giraffe? How has a seventies dance move made its way to your secluded part of the African serengeti? And why are your legs bending at impossible angles? I imagine that the lions, applauding his late-night-fever, soon lept upon him once his legs gave out. The cricket coordinated it, I KNEW it. He’s the mob boss of the jungle, lulling hapless herbivores to an untimely demise. YOU MONSTER.

Or why, oh, WHY are there two hippos up on sticks? How have they managed to balance their enormous weight on such tiny stilts, and what motivation can there possibly be for you to be up there? WHY DO THE TREES HAVE EYES?

Why are there so many children’s books with anthropomorphic hippos, and what is this trying to subliminally teach my child? Is there a secret government program to use hippos as a trigger sometime in the future to implement mind control?

Maybe I should get some new books.

---

Thanks again to @mariannewest for running this challenge. With only five minutes to madly write, it's interesting what stories end up emerging! And high-five to all you potty-training parents out there, patiently waiting! Do any of you have books that you ended up reading ad nauseum?

If you haven't heard the rules to this challenge, check out the intro post here: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/writers-or-wanna-be-writers-wanted-be-free-freewrite