One hot summer morning when I was four, I was playing with my dolls as usual in the second largest room of our tiny half-dilapidated apartment. On the other side of the room, in front of the wide open window, was my mother doing her daily house cleaning. While vacuuming the floor, she had found a patch of mould on the wall, and now, she was scrubbing the wall with a hard sponge, totally focused.
My baby brother was crawling around our tiny home as usual. He had just turned one. Since it was a very hot day, my mother had not given him any diaper out of concern that it might irritate his skin.
After some time, my brother came crawling to see what was happening in our room. He went next to my mother, trying to see what she was doing, but my mother was so focused on her task that she did not notice him.
After a moment of observation, my brother turned around and sat on the floor right in front of the window. He sat there for a while, keeping a straight posture. He was unusually still.
“How strange!” I thought to myself. “My brother never sits quietly like that!”
The next moment, my brother started crawling again, away from my mother, back to his exercise.
But he left something on the floor.
As I watched closely, the thing on the floor became clear: a solid poop, shining in the sunlight coming in from the window.
“Mom!” I shouted. “Look what’s behind you!”
That was when my mother finally looked around and saw my brother’s piece of artwork.
“Sweetie! You pooped!?”
My mother jumped to her feet to go and grab my brother before there would be more mess in the house.
I laughed as I watched my mother go after my brother with such urgency and then come back to clean up the shiny poop on the floor. Though I knew it was not a funny situation for my mother, I could not help feeling delighted by this wonderful disruption that threw us all out of our regular routine.