if we are at someone's home and bella has to use the restroom she employs the best of manners. she seeks out the host(ess), asks them where their restroom is and if she may use it. after receiving consent and directions she turns and hurriedly moves towards it. if what she has to do is poop, she will pause, turn and ask if they have father wipes.

what's a ... a father wipe?

it's what my father uses to wipe after going poop.

oh. i don't think we have any of those.

darn-it.

i'm occasionally positioned to see the expression on the listener's face. the visible jolt of repulsion that roils through these unsuspecting folks is, for lack of a better descriptor, unique. being forced to absorb such intimate knowledge of one of my most private practices leaves them altered in a way akin to having witnessed some terrible human accident. i call this mental state 'getting stamped'.

sadly, bella doesn't understand that some facets of a family's life are special and only meant for that family. she doesn't yet understand it because i haven't yet explained it to her. while i accept some will term this as parental negligence, i just can't bring myself to end such a pristine innocence. well that and i have lofty plans for a coffee house art show featuring close-up shots of these people's defenseless faces as their brain looks for a drawer to file an index card that has the two simple and independently innocuous words 'father wipes' scrawled across its front.