Oh please be Chocolate!

By Joshua Johnson, 07/24/2007

Once children enter your life, you begin to learn many aspects of life that are different now that you are a parent. One of those aspects is to not get so upset by things that otherwise would ruin your day. If your shirt gets stained on the morning of a big presentation, you simply change your shirt and admire the arm on your kid- eventually daydreaming of them throwing a no-hitter at Fenway; life now becomes about how you look at things in a more patient manner. Life also becomes about the rules by which you live, and the tests that complement these rules. One of the most vital tests parents can keep in their arsenal is the "sniff test".

The sniff test comes in handy on so many occasions. The most important of which is when you discover a foreign substance on your clothing. This test may seem very simple, but not so fast. The sniff test must be conducted with the utmost of caution and delicacy.

Please be careful when beginning your own test and keep in mind these two simple — yet vital — rules:

1. Always be sure to isolate the foreign substance. For example, if you have just been holding your toddler, before you can place your nose close to the substance, you must first check your toddler for anything seeping from his or her waistline. If nothing has crept out of said waistband, you are clear to proceed to step two. If you do find some peeking poo, no need to proceed to step two. You must abandon all other actions and proceed immediately to the bath where you can clean up your offending child.
2. Never assume the foreign substance is chocolate, because it almost never is. This is the most important rule. If you defy the second rule, you will enter the parental club that has many members, none of whom will admit their membership.

However, I will admit to being a member of the club. Heck, after two kids and two dogs, I think I am the President of this club. I don’t know why, but it always happens to me, never my wife. Just the other evening, my wife and I were enjoying a glass of milk and a chocolate chip cookie.

After finishing our respective desserts, as we both sat in our content and continued to review our day, it was then that my wife informed me I had a piece of chocolate on my lap. Now, It would seem natural this would happen after enjoying a freshly baked cookie, for we all know it is common to find crumbs left behind after enjoying such a treat, and who doesn’t feast on these crumbs once they are found? So I did what any other self-respecting person would do and went to retrieve the final morsel.

As I raised my hand to my mouth, my wife warned me, "You better make sure that is chocolate before you go any further!" I reassured her that it was simply chocolate. After all, it had been more than 30 minutes since I had last changed our son.

Well, as you can imagine, it wasn’t chocolate and two days later, I am still gargling mouthwash and my wife is still laughing. Regretfully, I failed to heed the rule and subsequent test that is so vitally important within the day-to-day living of parenthood. I urge the rest of you to place this in the Top 10 Rules of Parenting and mind it well.