In my life I have been saved from quite a few things in life but very few bigger than what my friend Travis Johnson saved me from today. To paint the picture for you I will give some history. My son at 3 1/2 years old is pretty much completely potty trained when it comes to pee pee. He takes himself most of the time, can make it through the night and usually any accidents are minor due to the excitement of some activity. We still are struggling with the poo poo though. My son does not like the feeling that he has when trying to “grunt” one out on the toilet and somehow the slow process of letting it go in his underwear feels better. So about every other day my wife or I are dealing with poopie pants.

Even though it is not my favorite part of parenting I have grown to realize that it comes with the job description. Last week Owen took pooping in his pants to a whole new level. I blame his mom somewhat for this because of the incredible amount of time that they spend making crafts and creating messes with glue, crayons, paint etc. I am not sure what thought process occurred in the discovery that you can finger paint with poop, but it happened. I thought about taking some pictures of the work of art to send into the Discovery Channel show “Dirty Jobs”. Anybody who has had children would tune in for the Raising a Child Episode. So Owen got a bath, I cleaned up the art and we went on with our day.

That brings us to today. Ten minutes after I put Owen on the toilet to go poop and he says, “I don’t have to go”, I encounter a smell walking down the hall. You know the one, it is unmistakable. Sure enough Picasso is back at it! There are few things that Owen can do to push me to the edge. Just let me say, cleaning poop takes me there and back, twice. His innocent thinking does not allow him to grasp the disgusting nature of his work of art.

So on to the saving grace… Just as I am beginning the process of assessing the situation and formulating a plan for the clean up of the toxic spill my wife hands me my cell phone. Let me say I enjoy talking and spending time with Travis but there has never been a moment that I was happier to hear from him. I had been saved from Poopie Patrol! He was calling to invite me to a seminar and at that moment I would have went anywhere but it wasn’t until September. To tell you what a great guy he is, he let me shoot the breeze with him for about 10 minutes just to avoid having to go back to the contamination zone.

I have clearly discovered a new test for levels of friendship. When a friend will allow you take up their valuable time to avoid Poopie Patrol that is a valuable friendship. Thanks Travis!