Why I always choose the stall furthest from anyone. (January 2015)

Yesterday, I took Emily to the store to teach her a lesson about money. She wanted a new baby doll and she had earned about 10 bucks doing chores around the house over the last few months (mostly cleaning up after my youngest daughter, The Kraken, destroyer of playrooms.) She was disheartened to learn that everything she wanted was over 10 dollars and lamented very loudly about each toy she could not afford. She couldn’t settle on a toy and began to dance about in the aisle, legs crossed. So I took her to the bathroom. She complained all the way that she was fine, she didn’t have to go and “why does this ALWAYS happen to me?!”. A lady (whom I never actually saw) followed us into the bathroom and took position in the stall next to us. Emily announced to me that she “just had to pee”- hand on one hip and finger pointed at me as to punctuate both her intention and displeasure with the whole situation. She sat down for a second and then, in her “quiet” voice, said, “Mom, this bathroom REALLY stinks”. I noted that was normal for a place designed specifically to release, capture and dispose of human waste. “No, Mom. It smells like poop and I think it’s coming from the lady next to us.” Before I could even respond, she stuck her head under the stall “Yep. She’s totally pooping.” (I was completely speechless at this point because Emily in fact was correct and it was awful). Then Emily decided on a solidarity approach: “Well, maybe I should just poop too”, hopped back on the can and began to loudly grunt. As I tried to shush her, she, midgrunt, pointed to her crinkled face and said, “This. Is. My. Poop. Face.” She finished quickly, completed all required steps associated with the task of using a restroom. As we were leaving, she loudly shouted to the lady (who was outwaiting us in the stall), “Good luck with the rest of your poop, Ma’am!”.