Now That We've Got That Cleared Up, Let's Continue the Introduction.

I thought I should probably explain the title of my blog. Poop on a Hot Tin Slide. It's all very cryptic. See, this one time, I took my oldest daughter Maya to the park, and there was this big curving metal tube slide, see, and it was a hot day, see, and Maya wanted to slide. See? And there's poop involved. So like I says, cryptic.

So up to the tip-top of the slide she climbed, and I waited at the bottom and peered anxiously up the slide tube to catch my darling dear as she slid down on her bum-bum. Instead, halfway up the slide, I was faced with what could only have been a baked-on, caked-on, solid as the rock of ages, poop. On the hot tin slide. My world went slow-motion as my mouth opened and I began to yell to Maya, "Noooooooo! Dooon't gooo dowwwwn the sliiiiiiide, Maaayaaaaa!" But it was too late. She had slid. Right over the poop on the hot tin slide. I flew into such a panic that I thought I would perish. I imagined my child exiting the slide with some other child's diaper-dump all over her adorable, pristine clothes. I didn't even know what I would do if that were the case. My mind went wild with the horrific possibilities. Thoughts of dumping the pants, and the child herself, in the trash bin crossed my mind.

I gingerly but thoroughly examined her pants for evidence of excrement. I found none. I checked again. I saw no crap. One last check yielded no evidence that Maya had picked up any traces of shittery. I could only assume that (1) the poop had been on that baking-hot slide so long that it was now fossilized; (2) the child who had donated the poop had also at the same meal consumed latex, cement, silicone, papier mache, Gorilla Glue, Magic-Shell chocolate ice cream topping, and God knows what else, giving the poop an instant, rock-hard sheen and a stick-to-it-ive-ness the likes of which have never been seen (I'm almost positive that Post-It Notes were created in a similar lucky accident); (3) the heat and friction of so many tiny bum-bums sliding over that same pile of poop had seared it, nay, ground it, into the slide itself; or (4) the poop had been shellacked for posterity.

So I don't know what evil, hateful mother knowingly sent her child down the slide with a pantload, or what child would be so Damien as to stop mid-slide and take a giant duke, but either way, Maya's trousers somehow escaped duke-free.

However. That didn't stop me from stripping her naked from the waist down when we got to the car, before I'd dare put her in her carseat.

Just in case.