for  Dan  –  all  in  good  fun  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

t a b l e o f c o n t e n t s

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W u n d e r l i c h P a r k

U l t i m a t e G a m e r

S p o r t s A u t h o r i t y

D e a d m a n ‘ s C u r v e

L a k e L y t a l

t h e L o s t a n d F o u n d

t h e R o d e o

H o s e d

S o u t h F l o r i d a F a i r

U n d e r t h e S i n k

H o c k e y S t i c k

Wunderlich Park

 

One time, we were on vacation in Santa Rosa, California, visiting my dad’s sister.

Aunt Laura worked during the day, so Michael, Dan, Dad and I were left to fend for ourselves until she came home in time for dinner and an episode of Mr. Bean. Dad was flipping through some tourist guide one day and happened to stumble across an article about a national park – Wunderlich Park. Obviously, it was fate. So, we loaded up our rental car for the three-hour trek to the promised land.

With maybe an hour left, as we were all coming out of our respective car-ride-induced comas, Dad started to pump the jams. It was above the triumphant guitar riffs of Pearl Jam that Dan sounded the alarm.

“ I h a v e t o g o t o t h e b a t h r o o m . ”

In a magnificent display of reflexes and skilled maneuvering, Dad managed to lunge across the freeway to the exit we’d just about passed. The off-ramps were becoming fewer and further in between as we neared our destination and history had proven that when it came to matters of excrement, you didn't expect Dan to wait.

Luckily, there was a public library out there in the middle of the forest. Dad and Dan hustled inside, making a beeline for the bathroom. Michael and I waited in the car.

This could have been it.

It wouldn't have been the first time a family outing had been thwarted by the untamed beast that was Dan's digestive track. I think, in a way, we’d already accepted the likelihood of turning back.

No less than twenty minutes later, they resurfaced, seemingly triumphant, and we breathed a sigh of relief. Crisis averted.

A little later, about fifteen minutes out from the park, I started to get antsy myself.

“Dad, how much longer? I really have to pee.”

There was no swerving or driving acrobatics this time around. Instead, a calm reply.

“About fifteen minutes, think you can make it?”

“Sure.”

We entered the park and followed a long, winding road toward the picnic site. Things were getting pretty desperate. I gritted my teeth.

“Oh my GOD, I don't know what kind of bathrooms are here, but when we find them, they’re M I N E .”

At this point, my entire being was focused on holding my liquid. It needed to be made clear that I would be pouncing at the earliest opportunity for relief.

Then, the alarm.

“ I h a v e t o g o t o t h e b a t h r o o m t o o t h o u g h ! ”

I felt my stomach drop.

“WHAT – did you not JUST go at that library?”

“… no.”

“WHAT – then what were you doing in there for HALF AN HOUR???”

“It was just gas!”

“Well maybe it is this time too.”

“No, this is real this time! I have to GO!”

With that, Dad pulled the car into the parking lot. Straight ahead stood salvation: a giant, hexagonal handicap-accessible port-o-potty. For a minute, we all just stared,

registering the fact that there was only one answer for two desperate needs.

“No. NO WAY.”

I snapped out of my stupor and threw open the car door. Dan tried to follow suit but I slammed his shut as I hurtled past toward the toilet. I almost forgot to close the door behind me as I tore off my shorts and found ultimate relief. Only a second or two after, Dan came beating on the door.

¡B A N G B A N G B A N G!

“SHANNON I HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM.”

¡B A N G B A N G B A N G!

I couldn’t help but laugh a little.

“SERIOUSLY I HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM GET OUT.”

¡B A N G B A N G B A N G!

“SHANNON COME OOON!”

He voice had started to shake a little. I could tell he was getting desperate.

¡B A N G B A N G B A N G!

“SHANNON!!! YOU'RE GOING TO MAKE ME POOP MY PANTS!”

“Quit it Dan! You had your chance! I'm almost done anyway!” I hollered back as I used the last of the toilet paper. “Whoops. This won’t end well.”

¡B A N G B A N G B A N G!

“Oh my god – O K A Y.”

I stepped toward the door and was met with a sudden silence. Then:

“Aww MAAAN! SHANNON! YOU DID IT! YOU MAAAADE ME! GODDDDDDDDDDD.”

I opened the door and was greeted by his red, wailing face. He pushed me out of the way and slammed the door shut, sobbing loudly over a defeat he knew all too well. I walked back toward the car.

I might’ve felt bad if it wasn't totally his fault. I'd called dibs and he'd had his chance. Once again, his bathroom savvy failed to deliver.

Back at the car, Michael and Dad were deliberating on where to go from here. Soiled pants were usually a deal breaker on family outings, especially ones that called for hiking.

But not this time.

Dad was determined.

Just as he was about to start unloading the car, he was interrupted by a piercing cry of anguish.

“GOD, there's no TOILET PAPERRRRRRRRRAAAAAAHHHHH!!!”

Thinking fast, Dad reached for the roll of paper towels we’d packed in with the rest of the gear and disappeared into the port-o-john.

Moments later, the two of them emerged, Dad pointing Dan to a nearby water spigot. He was to wash out those drawers and lay them in the sun to dry. We were going to grill out. We were going to go hiking. We were not going to go home.

Michael and I watched from a distance as Dan approached the spigot, shorts in hand. He suddenly stopped short, hesitating. He started to swat at the air, shrinking back from the spigot, as though he were afraid it might bite him. Michael clued me in.

“There’s a nest of yellow jackets under that faucet.”

Dan looked back at the car, but seemed to immediately understand that he would get no sympathy from our father. And so he accepted his fate, bowing his head and inching ever closer to the wasp-ridden spigot.

“Come HERE.”

She checked.

“Daniel, where’re your underpants?”

“I didn’t wear any.”

“Garbage. WHERE are they?”

Silence.

Sighing.

“Kevin, could you go check the bathroom?”

Kevin walked off to see what he could find, returning minutes later, looking a little unnerved.

“We should go.”

“What the matter? Did you find them?”

“Yeah. I think it’s time for us to leave.”

Apparently, Dan had encountered some technical difficulties during his initial restroom

Ultimate Gamer

Video games were a pretty big deal in our house in the late 90s to early 2000s. For a while there we had four separate game systems hooked up to four different televisions in one giant wall unit in our living room. At any given moment, all three of us could be plugged in. There was a period of time in which, at every given moment, the three of us were plugged in.

While I can admit that the gaming under our roof got a little out of control, neither Michael nor I – nor the two of us combined – could compare to Dan’s devotion.

Usually, I wound up gaming from a seated position on the couch with Dan taking to the floor, lying on his stomach inches from the screen to attain optimum focus.

From this vantage point, I was witness to a certain series of fidgets that I soon came to recognize as Dan adamantly clenching his butt cheeks together. Nature called, but it seemed that duty called louder as he regularly stifled his bowels in favor of prolonged game play.

Inevitably, when he reached his breaking point, he would jump up – “Don’t touch it!” – and make a mad dash for the bathroom.

Once, or perhaps more than once, where we should have heard the flush of the toilet, we heard the start of the shower instead.

Sports Authority

One time, at the start of soccer season, Mom and Kevin took us to Sports Authority to get some shin guards and shorts for the new soccer season that had just started. Dan disappeared for a while to make a bathroom run. He returned soon thereafter, no harm, no foul.

After a little while, something rose to my attention.

“Hey Dan, you smell like poop.”

“What are you talking about? Shut up, Shannon.”

“I’m saying you smell like poop.”

“No. I. DON’T.”

At that point, we were loud enough to have piqued Mom’s attention.

“Come here, Dan,” she beckoned, “Let me check your underpants.”

“Mom! Shannon’s just being mean! They’re FINE.”

Dan grew wide-eyed as he realized we’d spotted him.

Within minutes, we were on the road back to Grandma’s house.

Michael and I flopped down in the living room to thaw, exhausted and pink from the afternoon’s activities, as Dad began to deal with the situation at hand. He started peeling back Dan’s layers of winter clothes, starting with the oversized down coat borrowed from Joe, followed by a fleece pullover on loan from Uncle Dennis, until finally reaching his own Miami Hurricanes shirt he’d lent Dan that morning.

Dad went to peel that final layer and Michael and I watched in horror as the collective realization that Dan had tucked the shirt not just into his pants, but into his underwear, washed over the entire room.

Later, as I walked through the kitchen, I was pretty sure I saw it in the garbage.

visit and had attempted to simply flush away the evidence.

I caught a glimpse of the water seeping out from under the bathroom door and into the hallway as we made our getaway.

Deadman’s Curve

One time, when we were in Michigan for Christmas with Dad’s side of the family, we went out sledding with our cousins, Drew and Joe.

They took us to this hill called Deadman’s Curve, which was supposed to be the steepest sledding spot in town. We spent the whole afternoon there, climbing up the side of the hill, launching ourselves down in groups of two or three and then rushing back up to do it all over again.

At one point, Joe and I were standing at the top of the hill watching Michael and Drew race each other down. He turned to me.

“Yo, what’s up with Dan?”

I looked past him and saw Dan standing a little way away from us, back slightly arched, hand down his pants.

That stance.

We both knew what was going down.

“Is that steam coming off of him?”

Lake Lytal

I played softball for a few solid years in the Lake Lytal Lassie League over on Gun Club Road. My dad was a coach and both of my brother’s played baseball in the boy’s league, so we Wunderlich’s were known regulars over at the park.

During my softball games, Mom would sit in the bleachers and gossip with the other mothers while my brothers would horse around with the other siblings that got dragged to their sisters’ games, usually climbing and rolling down a giant dirt pile that was a little ways off from the diamond.

One night, we were getting ready to head home and Dad looked up from packing the equipment to ask where Dan was. I didn’t know. Michael hadn’t seen him for a while, either. Mom started to get a little panicky.

We searched the dugouts, the dirt pile, the playgrounds, the patch of woods just behind the fields and the concession stand, coming up empty every time. Why we didn’t check the bathrooms first, I can’t really say.

Finally after a solid hour of Mom hyperventilating and Dad paging the entire baseball park, Michael was sent to scope them out. He recalls the stifling warmth and humidity that washed over him as he entered the dimly lit cinderblock restrooms. His eyes were met with the sight of the clothes of a small child strewn about the room, as though there had been a great and sudden struggle. He approached with caution.

“Dan?”

“Michael.”

A moment of hesitation.

“Michael. Get Dad.”

“Daniel. Is there a problem in there?”

He stopped walking, his silence confirming what we already knew to be true.

She lost it.

“We were JUST at the bathrooms. JUST a MINUTE ago! WHAT were you doing in there??”

Truly a question for our time.

When we finally got into the car, Mom wouldn’t let Dan sit down on the seat. It was a rental and she didn’t want to risk any unnecessary fees. Instead, she reclined the front seat all the way back until it was at a flat 180 degrees, sentencing him to lie on his stomach the entire ride home. This way, his butt was kept from coming into contact with any surface.

We drove along like that for a while, until suddenly pulling off the freeway at an unfamiliar exit. Evidently, Mom and Cheryl had planned on surprising the four of us with a frozen treat for the ride home, a plan that they decided on sticking to despite recent happenings. We rolled into a roadside plaza and parked in front of a Dairy Queen.

I unbuckled my seatbelt and threw open the door, ready for a taste of glory after having spent the last half an hour with my head forced out a car window to escape the stench and the lecturing that came with it. Dan started to fidget with the seatbelt that had been fastened around his back. Mom grabbed him by the wrist.

the Lost and Found

Sometimes, when Dan came home from school, we would know what had happened without even having to be told.

He’d come walking in with a plastic bag full of crumpled fabric wearing a new pair of shorts that he definitely hadn’t left the house wearing that morning.

the Rodeo

One time, Mom took Dan and I on a trip to Colorado to visit my godmother’s family in Colorado Springs.

We went to some kind of kitschy, touristy Wild West village one day, just for kicks. I think I remember there being a shooting range, some pig racing, and a rodeo with “real” cowboys and rodeo clowns. After a day full of tumbleweeds ‘n’ root toot tootin’ with Cheryl’s two kids, Jack and Jen, Mom rounded us up for a bathroom break before hittin’ the road back toward home.

As was often the case, we all found ourselves standing around waiting on Dan. Of course, no one was complaining. He should by all means have taken his time in there, so long as he got the job done. Once finally resurfaced, we headed for the exit.

Now, I don’t remember just how big the parking lot was or just how long of a walk it might’ve been from the exit, but by the time Mom and I reached our car, we realized Dan was lagging a little far behind. We looked back to see what the hold up was. We spotted him a few yards back, waddling timidly along, back slightly arched, hand down his pants.

Man down.

Mom approached the situation with what optimism and poise she could muster.

“Do you really think you deserve an ice cream right now, Daniel?”

He looked up at her as all hope drained from his eyes.

“No no, you’ll stay here.”

So I went inside alone to get in line with Cheryl, Jack, and Jen. We buzzed about Blizzard ingredients and toppings while mom lectured Dan outside in the parking lot. I had to admit feeling bad for him as I looked out the window to see him lying face down in shame.

Hosed

One time, after Dan had had an accident, Mom told him to go out to the side of the house and hose himself and his shorts down.

Michael and I were probably twelve and thirteen at that time, so we were pretty big jerks. We went into his bedroom, which had a window right by the outside water spigot, from which we watched and giggled like the jerks that we unarguably were.

Dan turned his back to the street in an attempt to spray the hose through the window at us, leaving his bare butt exposed to the poor little girl who happened to be passing by.

We watched as she paused, processed, and proceeded to flee back the way she came.

South Florida Fair

One time, Dad took us to the South Florida Fair. We were all excited about eating exotic foods of varying degrees of grease saturation and riding rides that spun us silly so that we could throw everything up and eat all over again.

After we’d had our fill touring the concession stands, Dad had us stop at the bathrooms so that we could all pee before we set out to ride rides. Dan spent a healthy amount of time in the bathroom, which was nothing short of delightful in our book. Whatever it took, so long as we were in the clear. He finally emerged, no less than twenty minutes after the rest of us, and we were off.

As we walked toward the ride sector, I remember watching Dan walking in front of me, perhaps staring at it for a good minute or so until I realized that there was definitely poop running down one of his legs.

Shit.

I knew that this meant we would have to go home.

For a second, I considered just keeping my mouth shut, but ultimately succumbed to the fact that you just can’t ignore some things.

I expected Dad to immediately abort, but, thinking on his feet, he came up with a plan.

This year at the fair, there was a new ride. A log flume water ride that soaked riders completely through as they plummeted down a forty-foot drop, splashing hard when they reached the bottom.

At first we thought it was a joke.

Michael and I started laughing as Dan started to protest.

Dad turned on us, stern as could be, and said, “You’re gonna go with him.”

We should’ve kept our mouths shut.

As we waited in line, it dawned on me that, since Dan was the smallest, he would be made to sit in the middle for even weight distribution. Michael wasn’t far behind me in this realization and we began to elbow each other, fighting to keep from being the one seated downstream.

By the time we reached the boarding area, a hairy Italtian carnie settled the matter in my favor, awarding me the front seat on account of my lady status.

Thank god.

Michael sulked the entire ride uphill and didn’t make a single sound on our descent, during which dan and I both screamed with a mixture of terror and delight. For a brief moment, all was forgotten as the water washed away our cares.

We exited the ride, triumphant and seemingly cleaner – though Michael retained his sulkiness for the afternoon.

A deed was done.

Under the Sink

One time, we were cleaning the house to get ready for holiday company.

I don’t remember who was responsible for the bathroom, either me or Michael, and so I don’t remember who found the collection of underwear stashed under the sink.

Word traveled pretty fast, though.

Hockey Stick

One time, Michael walked into my room with a hockey stick stretched all the way out in front of him.

“Look what I found in me and Dan’s closet.”

There were three stale pairs of poopy underwear dangling from the end of the stick.