Journal Entry from the Toddler Planet
February 18th, 2010Tuesday I woke to find a feral child crouched in the room. She refused to be bathed, despite several days’ odor and a face caked in day-old ketchup. Any moves toward the bathtub elicited primal shrieking. Piece by piece, I removed her clothes over the length of an hour. Each clothing item required strategic immobilization of the child’s strong, flailing limbs. Finally, she was down to just the diaper. I had filled a bucket with warm bathwater and brought it to the TV. She eyed it suspiciously. She refused to go near it. I turned off the TV and explained that if Caillou was to continue, a certain little bum would have to be sitting in a certain bucket of water. The young primate threw itself to the floor and grabbed and threw nearby objects, all the while eliciting a wail we refer to here in the city as “noise pollution.”
I slowly cornered the creature. The volume of screams increased. As I tore at her diaper, she shifted her screams from primal wails to a repeated shout of the word “STINKY! STINKY!”
“Yes,” I said, “You are stinky.”
“STINKY! STINKY!”
I turned on the TV and stuck her in the bucket, where she stiffened and howled. With one arm around her waist, I quickly soaped and rinsed the feral child. I soaked myself and the carpet, but a scientific curiosity drove me to want to see what was underneath the strata of ketchup. Then, I had an idea. Perhaps the fickle creature was not interested in Caillou today. I stretched an arm to the TV, flipping up the channels as quickly as I could to reach Dora.
My hypothesis was correct. The creature giggled and sank into the bucket, allowing me to wash her hair without protest. As a result, I was able to determine that the animal was in fact a cute little girl who is in a phase of Refusal to Bathe and who, admittedly adorably, now says all kinds of words, like “shoe” and “thank you!” and the ever-popular “STINKY!,” still needs to learn to just let it be known when all she really wants is to change the channel.