Word To Your Mother

So I find that the words 'bowel movement' bug me lately.

Yeah, okay, sure -- "Fun, but where's she going with this?" right? But lately friends and cohorts of mine have been discussing words they hate. My co-workers hate the words 'orientated' and 'moist' -- me, I've always found the word 'panties' to be obnoxious. But lately I find people using the words 'bowel movement' in such a way as to creep me out. Just gave myself the shivers thinking about it.

Now I *get* that it's proper terminology. I *get* that we're not 12, so poo-poo doo-doo caca does not cut it any longer. Fine. What's so wrong with 'poop' these days??? C'mon, America! "We put some castor oil in with the milk in her bottle, because it helps her with her bowel movements" was the sentence that prompted this post. WTF?!? Are you Dian Fossey? It's your CHILD. She poops. I poop. Hell, they wrote a book about it: Everybody Poops.

[Sidebar: "Everybody Poops" always makes me think of the REM song "Everybody Hurts" and leaves me desirous of singing "Everybody poops... sometimes..."]

So here's a compromise: "it helps keep her regular." Voila. After all, you're never too young to be worried about regularity, right?

I realize I am being unfair to my friend here. It's not her, it's not that sentence per se -- that's just the 'bowel movement' that broke the camel's back. It's the combo platter of several people before her using that phrase when something less clinical would be more user-friendly, and the sad fact that I am now 36 years old, and I do things like stand in my childhood friend's big-girl grown-up married-person kitchen and discuss things like her child's bowel movements. None of those benchmarks freak me out in and of themselves, but linked together, they make a charm bracelet of "Holy shit -- this is my life."

Kiss the baby!