Parenting Horror Stories: Rotten Fruit, Diaper Disasters, and Life Lessons

At the end of a recent hotel stay — the kind where you’re supposed to come home rested and rejuvenated — we climbed into our car and were instantly greeted by a smell that can only be described as “rotting fruit meets hot garbage in a sauna.” It was not the sort of scent that inspires a peaceful drive. As we gagged our way through the initial stench, we also noticed we were no longer alone. The car was swarming with gnats. A quick investigation revealed that the youngest of our wild things had taken two bites of an apple — two! — and then lovingly stored the rest in the door pocket of his car seat. For two days. In the August sun.

The apple was immediately discarded. The gnats and the smell took a little longer to clear. I think the car finally got back to normal after about 57 “when will we get there’s.”

If you’re a parent, messes like this are not new. They happen all the time and you grin and bare it — maybe even laugh — and figure out a strategy to clean it. It isn’t the first time a mess like this has happened, and it won’t be the last.

The rotten apple in the car is far from the worst mess I have ever cleaned as a parent. One day, one of my children — and I won’t say which one to protect the guilty party’s future chances of getting married — decided to remove his diaper and relieve himself all over his bedroom during naptime. This was a code brown emergency. The child was not content to contain his mess to the carpet or a bed. Oh no — several toys were casualties of this doodie disaster.

My child beshat a toy guitar, a Daniel Tiger trolley, several action figures, and a couple other toys that I was too traumatized to remember. Now, there are some kind and gentle fathers out there who are the type who would tell their child all is well and lovingly clean their toys and return everything to its proper place like nothing ever happened.

Not this disgusted dad.

In what was not one of my better moments, I decided that the trash can outside was the best place for these turd-totaled toys. I was having no part of anything that involved trying to preserve poo-peppered playthings. I wanted my child to experience the consequences of crappy decisions.

After disposing of the toys, I moved on to cleaning the scene of the crime. In a classic case of piling on, it turns out we did not have any carpet cleaner in the house. Well, wasn’t that just the cherry on top of the whole odiferous ordeal?

Still livid, I decided that my child — who really wasn’t old enough to be processing any of this — needed to go with me to buy the carpet cleaner. Afterall, why should he get to play while I was on a quest to clean his befouled bedroom?

On the way to the store, I asked him why in the world he did that. His only explanation was “I’m really good at pooping.”

That he was.

That was the worst mess I have had to clean up. It was not graceful and neither was I. But it is nothing compared to the messes I know are coming. I hope I am able to meet them with more grace and better preparation.

I know there will be greater messes to clean up. There will be shattered dreams, broken hearts, bursted bubbles about friendships and how cruel the world is outside of the safe zone we’ve created for them.

There will be tears to dry, heartaches to heal, and wounds of the soul that can’t be fixed with a kiss and a bandaid. My kids haven’t hit the teen years or early adulthood yet. They haven’t faced the things we all know are ahead of them. These will be the real messes that these smaller messes have prepared us for.

As a parent, I’m getting better. I handled the apple incident a lot better than I did the naptime desecration. But, I am well aware that in the future, messes will be cleaned by time and effort instead of carpet cleaner, paper towels, and bug spray.