little bitty girl

As you all know, I am a huge fan of Dooce and lately she's been talking a lot about poop. Actually, she talks a lot about it in general. Anyways, this last particular entry, May 4th - The one thing we KNOW she inherited from me made me recollect a distant childhood memory.

I am almost always never constipated and this is the reason why -

Guava happens to be one of my all time favourite fruits. The guava of my youth is not like the genetically modified-strained-deseeded version of today. It was much hardier in the texture of the fruit and the quantities of seeds in the core are endless. Some of the cores would be so densely filled with seeds that if you ate around the fruit, you could use the core as siege weapons, they were so hard.

So naturally, people usually deseeded them before eating them. This being the case, I - being a born contrary person - happened to love eating the fruit in its entirety. My mum always warned me to just eat one with the seeds and the rest without because inevitably whenever it was guava season, mum used to buy them by the bushel. It made more sense as Kelvin and I could plow through twenty in a day. She was afraid it would clog up my system.

There just happened to be a day where I did eat one too many. I remember it quite well as it also happened to be one of the annual times where my cousins, the Ngs, came to stay with us for two weeks. I was about 8 or 9 years old.

Because there were so many extra people in the house, that prompted my mum to buy more guava than usual. More guava meant me eating more than my usual, seeds and all. Nature soon made its natural course until I had to go take a poop.

My cousin Jo-Ann and I, being a year apart, were inseparable. We were so inseparable that we often kept each other company in the bathroom. I know it sounds weird but all I can say is we were kids. She would bring some comics in and sit on the other side while we chatted.

On the fateful day, I was having a lot of difficulty and experiencing so much pain. After awhile I started whimpering and, Jo being the kind soul that she was, came by to pat my hands and offer support. She would puff breathes with me while I panted.

After what seemed to be an eternity, (that, and the endless knocking by our brothers who had been patiently waiting outside to use the facilities as well) we realized that this was no ordinary poo. I was whole heartedly sobbing by this point and calling for my mama. My cousins, grandma, aunt and uncle were all offering different advise. Finally, my dad (he looked like a giant to me back then) strode into the bathroom and shooed everyone out and (gulp!) administered an enama.

I am glad to say I don't really remember how he did it, so thank goodness for selective memory, but he was my hero that day! I was so relieved to be rid of my burden that no words can truly express the joy I felt after the last of the 30 guava cores popped out.

Poor dad! It seems all my memories of him are of me embarassing him in one way or the other! So needless to say, I now only eat two guava cores and deseed the rest. It's been happily-ever-after in the bathroom since!!