Editor's note: This is not a post about poop. Squeamish people can keep right on reading. Really!
All you parents out there, I bet you think you know the tolerances of diapers. I bet you think you know them so well that you could express them in a quasi-mathematical format:
If x=blueberries and y=bran muffins and the function is (b) breakfast, then function (l) lunch cannot include z=prunes (which of course are not prunes at all but dried plums! they're not your father's prunes!).
But do you really know what diapers can do? What their outer limits are? Allow me to tell you the story of how we came to understand the value of the diaper--sans poo--lo, this very weekend.
First a little background...My husband is many things: sensitive, handsome, funny. He is also a good driver. I would wager to say that he could be called a great driver, actually. He is one of the only Americans I have ever known who enjoyed driving in Prague--not in any way a car city, unless you're suicidal--and his quick reflexes have gotten us out of many a carjam, including one notable incident on I-90 in Connecticut during which we could have both been killed due to a distracted driver pulling into us at 75 miles an hour. (He is also the only American I know to have been pulled over by a traffic cop in Crete. Up until we were pulled over, I was not aware that there were any traffic cops in Crete, because there didn't appear to be any laws to enforce, save "Go faster!" and "Get out of my way!")
Anyway, we were driving yesterday on our old friend Highway 89, going to meet Nana and Grandpa in White Sulphur Springs for lunch and swimming. The weather was fine and the road was dry, and we were--as always--early. Like 45 minutes early. Most of you probably haven't spent time in White Sulphur Springs, so you'll have to take my word for the fact that staring down 45 extra minutes there would have been a hardship. So I convinced Chip to slow down to 55--a respectable, if slow, speed for a two-lane highway--and take the last few miles at a scenic drive pace. Even at that rate, we were almost immediately up the ass of a 4x4 pulling a trailer, so Chip pulled into the other lane to pass. I chastised him for passing early--since we were still a few car lengths behind the passing zone--but before I could even finish my sentence, the 4x4 was making a totally unsignaled turn, right into our lane. Stunt Car Driver Husband swung into action, swerving into the ditch, avoiding the 4x4, and--crucially--executing a quick maneuver to avoid the reflector pole straight ahead of us. The pole glanced off the side mirror on the passenger side, and we came to a stop.
No airbags deployed since Chip managed to avoid the impact, and everybody was fine. (Not entirely true. The karma of the dickhead in the 4x4 should be ruined for a good long time, since he didn't even stop to find out if we were OK.) The only casualty from the whole, VW-commercial-like experience was the cracked case on the side mirror. Even the automatic movement of the mirror hadn't been damaged! Here's how the mirror looked following the accident:
Once we met up with my folks, my dad assured us that we had probably done no lasting damage and predicted that the case could be salvaged with some super glue. Being a retired shop teacher and entirely too clever for his own good generally, he could have been expected to say that even if we had run smack into the pole, but in this case we recognized that even mechanically deficient people like us could probably handle super glue. (Just don't touch the eyes!)
We had the traditional adequate lunch at EAT and a very nice swim at the hot springs. It passed all too quickly and then it was time to head home again. All seemed fine until we started to reach normal highway speeds again. Then the case started flapping madly in the breeze, and we could tell that we were soon going to move from super-glue repair to dealership violation. We stopped the car to rummage around for string, a bungee cord, duct tape...but to no avail. Then I spied a diaper. "Isn't Connery's butt just about the same size as our side mirror?" I said with a glint in my eye.
In a word, yes. Diapers. They're not just for shit anymore! Oh, and you can forget all those expensive brands. This generic, Albertsons-brand diaper held it all together, with no embarrassing leaks. Well, right up until the point when we had to pass someone on the left and reveal our little secret.