The Day Ayun Was Here. Well, Ish.
Added at 8:27am and filed under Oh Mama, Site Stuff
It’s the 27th August . . . do you know what that is? No, it’s not the time when I finally crawl out from my hole and post an entry here (Christ forbid I ever actually do that) but today is the day when Ayun’s UK tour settles here at Furious Angel. The questions you’ve submitted should be answered in due course but if you’ve read any of the books – and as I’ve already TOLD you to, I see no reason why you shouldn’t have – then you’ll appreciate why I’m so excited to be able to offer you an exclusive piece on potty training – a topic that I know it close to some of your hearts! – right here for FA.com.
Potty Training – Ayun Halliday
I’ve always said that I wanted a pet monkey, which is a good pet to want as long as you have something to stand in the way of you getting one. For years, the thing that stood in my way was my foul-tempered
cat, Jambo, but when Jambo finally passed, I realized it was time to shit or get off the pot in terms of that monkey. Yes, I know, they’re murder on the furniture, they smell kind of funky, they’re illegal in the state of New York, but that wouldn’t have stopped me. The thing that finally put the kabbosh on my pet monkey was an online article about potty-training of monkeys.
Actually, monkeys don’t use the potty. They use litter boxes, but they use litter boxes the way young children use the potty, which is to say not very well, if at all. Training Jambo was easy, even though he was
already bat shit crazy as a tiny kitten, possibly as the result of being separated from his mother before he was fully weaned. I poured some Tidy Cat in a plastic litter pan, put it on the floor of the pantry, and showed him where it was. He had a couple of slip ups where he pissed all over me, my boyfriend, and the down-filled comforter at four in the morning, but only because he was trying to tell us something, probably, “Change my litter, bitch!” Otherwise, it was a total breeze.
My children on the other hand…
I always maintained that my children were potty-trained early, but in retrospect I think my friends were right that what I really meant was my children stopped wearing diapers early. Not as early as those Tibetan kids do their business through little slits in their padded drawers around the age of six months or something, but early. Too early, at least as far as my friends’ carpets and one ill-fated cardboard puzzle were concerned. I mean, I always encouraged my children to use the potty, but I have to admit, I found it a rather odious chore. Anyone who’s read my second book, No Touch Monkey! And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late can attest that I don’t shy away from the scatological realities, but I prefer to do so in language geared toward adults. Sitting on the side of the bathtub for hours, cooing, “Can you make pee pee on the potty, honey? Can you make pee pee and poo poo like a big girl?” The urge may be righteous, but the face is wrong!
Of course, I’m totally down with the importance of bolstering a child’s confidence through praise, which is why I always made it a point to say, “Good try!” even if the friend to whom the now-urine-soaked futon couch belonged didn’t necessarily agree.
It remains a mystery to me how the children came to accept the toilet as the best, and eventually only receptacle to receive the fruits of their eliminative processes. Think of all the thousands of words Annie
Sullivan spelled into young Helen Keller’s hand before the kid finally got it that all that percussion on her palm meant something specific. How many hours of hard labor before the pupil was socialized enough to
submit?
The thing I’ve always admired about monkeys is their unwillingness to submit. My monkey ideal, my simian n’est-plus ultra, has got to be the ballsy specimen I saw stealing an armload of cherries from a
pushcart vendor in Dharamsala, India. While the vendor fumed and shook his fists just like the hero of Caps For Sale, that monkey hunkered on a telephone wire, methodically eating the purloined cherries and
flinging their pits onto the outraged vendor’s head. I might not like that story so much if the cherries were poo, Dharamsala was my apartment, the vendor was me and the story had no end.
The good thing about diapers, besides their properties of absorption and containment, is that most able-bodied children eventually grow out of them, even those whose mothers aren’t exactly what you’d call pro-active. Can the same be said for monkeys? I have to admit, after potty training two children, I’m no longer so gung ho to find out.
August 2006
If you enjoyed that as much as I did, Ayun’s latest title Mamalamadingdong (in the US it’s called The Big Rumpus) is available through Amazon. And by ‘available’, I mean that it’s REALLY is, in oppose to being one of those orders which need to be written and published six weeks before delivery.
Oh, and finally, please note that I did not receive any cash incentive for this – to be honest, Ayun needs to pay no-one to endorse her writing . . . it speaks for itself. :)
V xx
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On 28 August, 2006 at 3:02 pm, Marian said:
Haha – I may never curse my child toilet training attempts again if monkeys are worse!
Thanks for sharing this with us vixx an ayun!
marian
On 28 August, 2006 at 9:18 pm, Emma said:
Thanks for the link to Auyn’s book – I will definitely check it out. :-)