When I was young I remember my Dad having loads of fun with fake poop.  The life of this novelty in our house actually spanned decades.  In its better years,  it was a great gag with its semi-gloss ceramic shine, glistening on the floor in the peripheral vision of the next victim.   It was seemingly endless fun for him and us, but truly, mostly him.  The poo had good mileage on it, holding up well over the years, but eventually as all ceramic does, it started to chip and then got cracked into pieces after being tripped on and scattered across the floor so many times.   Dad would carefully piece it together with Crazy Glue, like he did everything else that broke, and placed it once again on the floor to torment another houseguest.  This chipping and breaking went on for another decade until at some point, it sadly just didn’t look like poo anymore and got retired to the junk drawer.  I wonder to this day who finally threw out the poo?

I grew up.  Poop was still mildly funny.  Fart definitely still equaled funny in my book.  Then I had a kid.  Poop happened all the time, and suddenly there was little humor involved.  Because it was real, daily and sometimes, in the early years, hourly!  The fun vanished.

Until 2016, my daughter’s fifth birthday.  When she opened box after gift box, first carefully smelling each one.  Upon smelling and then opening the last package she asks, “Wheres the poop?”  Uh, what?  We had joked for weeks about her wanting poo for her Birthday and that I might have a box hiding for her somewhere with a turd in it.   A stinky one!  But it was a joke, or so I thought. The long face and actual tears at the lack of Birthday Poo in a box told me I was dead wrong to assume this was all a game.  She wanted turds.  In a box! OMG, did I drop the ball on this one!  Of course, it HAS to be genetic.  Why would she NOT want a fake number two for pranks?  Suddenly the fun of my childhood ceramic stinky came to mind and I quickly formatted a plan to get the kid what she wanted.  While she was preoccupied with new toys,  I found a small white jewelry box with cotton padding, put a few very dry but pretty round rabbit pellets inside and placed a red bow on top.   The box was placed quietly in the cat door where all secret messages and obscure deliveries herald their entrance into the house.   I told her I heard a knock and she ran out to find the package in the entry way.  With the utmost certainty that the UPS guy delivered her last present, and that it was poo, she opened the box.  Hugs, laughter, joy, total exuberance at the magic of Poop.  In her mind, her Birthday was complete.

This brings me to today.  The kid got a Prank Star Playdough Poo kit from a pre-school classmate for Valentines Day.  That would be brown Playdough and a poop shaped mold with complementary yellow colored dough to create a corn effect.   The kid was thrilled, totally delighted, smelling it repeatedly to check if it was real or not.  She used the mold to shape her new gag and placed it around the house for unsuspecting guests.  As fate would have it, three neighbors happened to stop by and unwittingly became her first victims.   I can hear my Dad laughing with glee.  The apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.  Parenting equals poop.  Lots of it.  But the imitation turds are the best, and if you can join your kids in creating entertainment out of  excrement then I think you are doing it right.   It doesn’t hurt to have a genetic predisposition either.   Warped humor makes the world fun.