Sneak Peek

M. M. Cabicar

It’s full of wee-wees!

If you have a small daughter, you probably face a similar dilemma when she says:

"Daddy, I need to poop."

Men’s or ladies’? Naturally I take her to the men’s toilet, disregarding her protests:

"But this is a boys’ woom! And I’m a gal."

"Bad luck for you, I’m not going to the ladies. Why don’t you like it here?"

At that moment, Vicky uttered her memorable sentence:

"Cause it’s full of wee-wees."

There was no arguing with that. She was right. To a considerable extent. One man standing at the urinal had to stop what he was doing due to laughing.

"And boys are pigs. Joey in my class says he once managed to pee up to the ceiling lights."

"Well, what a feat," I appreciated the boy’s performance, pressing her into a cabin.

"And ouw teacher was just asking him what he thought he was doing when he peed at her too."

More men at the urinals had to stop, but Vicky did not mind their laughter at all.

"And ouw teacher stahted scweaming, so a cleaning lady wan in."

There was a sudden silence in the room, full of tense anticipation. Vicky undid her trousers and I put her up on the toilet seat.

"And he peed at her, too."

The men’s room turned into a comedy show.

"Better press hard," I told her in a defeated tone.

"I can’t. Can you help me?"

I knew everyone was listening, but what else could I do? Otherwise we would have been bogged down there for ages.

"Heeeh..." I feigned grunting.

And Vicky followed up with her: "Heeeh..."

And the next-door cabin chimed in with another: "Heeeh..."

A couple of voices from the urinals joined in: "Heeeh...."

We all turned into a Prague Pressing Choir.

Enchanted with her success, Vicky made a few more tries. The main thing was it all worked nicely, and poo-poos began dropping down, which she commented on like this: "Gee, my belly has spilled out completely." And then she crowned it with the words:

"I’ll make a family of nice chocolate anacondas, shall I?" she rejoiced. I only managed to nod resignedly.

"I thought I’d just lay a faht, but now I see a whole family has been bohn," she said, kicking at the toilet bowl.

"I guess I won’t finish today..." a voice at one urinal said when laughter died down.

Finished. While I was looking for a pack of wet wipes, Vicky waited for a moment, then decided it was taking me too long and said:

"You’ve got no sodding TPs, have you? And I’ll have to stand here for houws and wait until I dwy." Then I found toilet paper, wiped her and dressed her. Vicky wanted to flush the toilet herself. I let her flush it, which she did with the words:

"Bye bye, my little poos! Have a nice time, swim well and no mischief down there."

By now I could easily start collecting admission at the urinals. I tried to take my daughter out of the room. While pulling up her sleeves to wash her hands, she came up with her most damning question of the day:

"Daddy, what about the little poos who have no mummy or daddy?"

I chose to swallow my explanation that in such a case they would most probably be shitty orphans, and I quickly washed her hands. Finally, there was more room at the urinals, and I heard one of the customers tell his buddy:

"It’s a great fun here, we’ve got to come more often."

Well.

We won’t.

Never ever.

Shitball

The windstorm that ripped through Prague last night was incredible; I have never seen anything like that. In fact, it wasn’t so much a storm, but rather a gale before the windstorm proper had started. Meteorologists registered wind velocity of 25 m/s, which is 90 km/h. Both my dog Dennis and myself had problems keeping our feet on the pavement. It was my wife Kate who sent us packing, allegedly "before the storm starts in earnest." The actual windstorm was the proverbial fart of a hurricane, compared with what had happened in the streets before it came. Every light object that lay in the streets was flying around. I couldn’t open my eyes because of a cloud of dust; twigs and all the rubbish on the pavements zoomed around. The Earth seemed to have completely lost its gravitational attraction. It wasn’t a mere windstorm but a fusillade of powerful gusts of wind blowing in all directions and tossing us to and fro. Dennis put on his routine behavior when going to the vet: turned into a super heavy anchor, his four paws jammed and dug in the ground. Still, considering his age, my old dog coped with the storm quite well, only his disfigured body now looked much more streamlined. You surely know those pictures showing a dog with its muzzle sticking out of a driving car. Now imagine a dog sticking out its entire body from a passing vehicle... Judging by a fissure in his skin near the mouth, Dennis’s fur seemed to have rolled back towards his rump. But we eventually managed to stagger round the corner to a spot that looked safer and cozier. Dennis immediately got down to doing his job, determined to accomplish his mission in a record time, and get back home as soon as we possibly could. The dog’s eyes nearly jumped out of his head, he was pressing so hard, and at one moment he resembled a big, hairy fly. The job was finally finished, its outcome deserving an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to clean up in such windy weather, but I would never, in my darkest dreams, envisage what happened next. I nearly picked up the dog’s shit into a paper bag when a gust of wind knocked me for a loop and the bag with its content, sticking just at the top of the bag, soared up, as if carried off by aliens. I have to add that in this particular case they hadn’t chosen the most valuable sample on Earth. The aliens probably realized their mistake soon enough and chucked the specimen at a window and let the paper bag fly away. Needless to add, the muck stuck on the window. I stood transfixed watching the scene. My 200-year-old dog succeeded in shitting on a second floor window. That deserved a second entry in the Book of Records! But a much better idea than thinking of breaking a record was to slip off behind the corner, since somebody was coming to the soiled window. It opened and in spite of the howling wind the voice of an old man, saying, "Mary, dear! Come and see, someone shitted on our windowsill!", came over loud and clear. Then, a less distinct female voice was heard from inside the room: "James, watch your language, please. It’s the terrible wind that probably blew something in. We live on the second floor, so it’s pigeon droppings perhaps, am I right?" "OK, come and see for yourself. These are no pigeon droppings. It’s more like a bear’s turd,” yelled the old man excitedly. I have to admit that Dennis had had bowl movement problems for the past few days, and I thought the good old dog wanted to get rid of it all in case the windstorm lasted for several days. Or even months. "You always exaggerate, James!" "All right, come and see!“ the old man screamed angrily. "It’s still warm. This must have been blown in here straight from some biker’s butt!" "James!" cried the female voice inside the room, but this time much angrier. "I’m making dough for your dumplings, and I’m not going anywhere just because of your paranoia that a biker drove up to the second floor and parked his bike on the windowsill just to defecate on our windowpane! Must have been a pigeon." "I’m telling you it’s still warm!!" the old man roared out into the street. "Have you touched it, perhaps?" the female voice shrieked out. "No, I just thrust a thermometer into the shit and now I’m taking its pulse!!" the old man wheezed, and I was beginning to fear he might pass out. "Sure enough, I had to touch it when you are too busy to come and see how other people shit on our window!" A moment of silence. Followed by a blood-curdling female howl: "OH, MY GOD, JIMMY, IT’S A TURD!! HOW COULD IT GET HERE, FOR GOD’S SAKE?!" The old man was also hopping mad, staring down at the street. Hiding behind the corner with my dog, I didn’t dare to move, pressing myself to the wall. I was afraid the wind might push me onto the stage. Right in front of the curtain. "I don’t know. I haven’t seen a soul. I wonder if it could have come from above?" "And how about the sewer?" "It’s still warm, I’m telling you!" the old man yelled in explanation. "Just try yourself!" "HOW REVOLTING!" the old lady squealed. "FOR GOD’S SAKE, IT’S STILL WARM, JAMES!" "Well, I’ve been telling you all the time!" the old man finally obtained his satisfaction. He kept leaning out of the window, looking around: "Do you think those Ukrainian window cleaners might be climbing around here again? Do you remember the last time they rappelled down on the ropes? You know, when they feel like it they can easily climb up again..." So, with a little help from me, my dog Dennis created an absolute mind-bending mystery. And it was definitely unwise to try to explain it in any way. We sneaked home. Kate was awaiting us and asked me the routine question right in the doorway: "How did it go?" My eyes lit up: "Well, you won’t believe me..." And a few minutes later our flat exploded with the scream: "OH, MY GOD, JIMMY, IT’S A TURD!! HOW COULD IT GET HERE, FOR GOD’S SAKE?!" That day we went to bed much later than usual and we couldn’t fall asleep. Our dog has invented a brand-new game: Shitball. With a lot of goals on each house.

Bride

We bumped into a bride and a groom just a stone’s throw from Prague’s Powder Tower. A photo shoot was under way. My first mistake: I shouldn’t have stopped there with my four-year-old daughter. I should have dragged her away even if she had dug in her small heels and plowed out cobblestones with her tiny feet. We stood still for a moment, Vicky intently watching the bride, and then she said: "Daddy, she shouldn’t weaw such a dwess in this hot weader, am I wight? She’ll fwy." The bride wore a beautiful wedding gown with a large skirt. And unfortunately neither she nor her groom happened to be foreigners, so they understood what Vicky had said. The groom smiled, winked at Vicky, bent down to her and whispered: "Don’t you worry. As soon as I can, I’ll get her out of the dress." Vicky grabbed my leg because a strange man had accosted her in the street. After a while her grip eased and her pensive look came back to her face. And then she called to the bridegroom: "But when you take her dwess off, you have to powder her botty or she’ll have sowe spots." Thus spoke an experienced mum of many small dolls. I only hoped that if the groom did obey her wise advice, he wouldn’t use powdered sugar, as Vicky herself had once done.

And that was it. Crystal clear. We should have sneaked away as usual. But this time I had stopped Vicky too late. The groom did feign a laugh, but the bride had already been red in the face since the moment her partner divulged his plans. As a matter of fact, she could have reckoned with a situation like that. My second blunder: we should have cleared out as quickly as possible. Instead, my stupid self tried to brighten up the atmosphere with an uncertain statement: "What a lovely bride, isn’t she, Vicky? Just like your mummy in her wedding photo." We should have definitely slipped away before Vicky had time to ask her next question: "And daddy? Do bwides piddle, and how?" The bride turned even redder and mumbled out: "Don’t mention that!" She seemed to have her legs crossed under her skirt. The groom started laughing out loud. And Vicky pressed on: "With a big dwess like that she can’t go to the loo, can she?" Vicky was turning her little head, shrugging, her palms turned upwards as if holding two trays over which two vital quiz questions were hovering. I looked around for an ambulance or a paramedic, because I knew resuscitation would be imminently needed. For me. I thought we were headed to a fun park that day; if I’d known we would be cracking the problem of how brides go about urinating, I wouldn’t have budged from home.

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