You can’t judge a book by its cover

Two little diapered butts toddle by. The stench is eye-watering.

“Noah, do you have a poo?” Noah is not 100% accurate, but he’s pretty good. No harm in streamlining the investigative process.

“No.”

“Okay, Tank, let’s have a look at you, then.” I do the oh-so-familiar yoink at the rear waistband and have a gander past those pink cheeks to the depths beyond. The second I pull the waistband back, I’m further assaulted by stench. This is the source, all right. Gah.

I tug four or five baby wipes from the box. Normally I get one or two, but, if the stench is anything to go by, this one’s going to be a multiple-wipe event.

And there, nestled in the diaper, lays one marble of poo. Okay, maybe a smallish walnut, but no more. A smallish walnut that flips off the diaper into the toilet, and requires but a quickish swipe at his butt with a single wipe to clean him. I stuffed the other four or five wipes back in the box.

I should know by now that you can’t go by the smell. I’ve opened many a diaper expecting nothing more than wet, and been confronted by a gallon of oozing goo. And this reverse? Teeny amount, discharging 100x its volume in toxic fumes? That would be Zoe.

Sweetest little thing you’d ever want to see, a small-boned delicate black-eyed waif of a girl. Soft-spoken, too, a tiny, hesitant voice… an temperament, too. She was one of those kids I actually had to teach to say “No!” and “Mine!” (Really. They do exist. “Use your strong voice, Zoe. He won’t stop until you speak up for yourself. Strong voice.”)

All that mildness was utterly forsaken in the realm of poop. Lordy, that child was potent. Never seen smelled anything like it.

We were in a playgroup once, a large, concrete-walled room with some twenty other children and assorted caregivers and parents. Half-a-dozen of us caught the whiff at the same time, and began the Hunting of the Poo.

It was Zoe, of course. And when I opened the diaper and the other adults saw the single tiny marble therein, lo, there was Great Marvelling.

Seems Tank is another such as Zoe. Thank goodness they only seem to come along once every ten years…

On the upside, I guess I’ll be saving on baby wipes.