“We can potty train him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make this family’s first diaper-less child. Liam will be that child. Better than we was before. Better…stronger…cleaner.”

***

That’s the hope, at least. It’s been a week since we’ve hunkered down on this whole potty training deal, finally going cold turkey and kissing those diapers goodbye (figuratively, of course, very, very figuratively. I can’t stress this enough). Sure, this undertaking’s not quite as advanced as rebuilding the Six Million Dollar Man—though that price tag might just be in the ballpark for the cost of diapers *hardy-har-har dad joke*. Nonetheless, it still involves a surgical precision in meticulous planning, a propping up that quickly gives way to a potty training freefall. Chaos. Leaky, naked chaos.

Dealing with said chaos involves a precarious mixture of determination and exasperation. Murphy’s Law is in full force here, and I’m torn between Simba’s brazen declaration, “I laugh in the face of danger” and Nietzsche’s harrowing assertion, “And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” So, yeah…if you haven’t guessed already, I’ve been staring at the hypnotic swirling of a toilet bowl far too often for far too long.

Potty training is as much a learned behavior as it is one of the more abstract concepts Liam has had to tackle yet. Ay, there’s the rub: Liam, like many tykes in the toddler/preschool bracket, is lousy with conceptualizing and on guard against demands that he knows he can best. On this desert island, Liam’s decided to enact an alliance of one to be a survivor—outwit, outplay, outlast. Free will’s a pain in the butt, though you better believe that the butt in question is going to be diaper-free by the time Liam first steps through the doors of his preschool this fall.

He’ll get there, right? Geometry holds that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and, hey, time flies like an arrow after all. But if I’ve learned anything this past week, it’s that potty training is anything but an exact science (though I have seen more than my share of parabolas in action…). It’s only fair that guiding Liam through this shift in the potty paradigm means that I too must be willing to adapt. I’ve had to master the duck-and-weave (figuratively and literally this time). And so coaxing and pleading have suspended, upended, overturned and replaced logic. Simple rationalization seems less effective than blatant bribery; an enticing reward bowl of M&M’s works wonders. But that’s the endgame. Getting on to that blasted potty seat is another story altogether.

Enter the undies. Enter the realm of magical thinking. It’s almost as if an education centered on stories has prepared me for this after all. Supposedly, the trick is to get a child to tell you when he or she has to use the potty, which means my auto-looped questions of “Do you have to go the bathroom?” better come with some enticements.

So when Liam donned his first pair of undies, I treated him to a far-fetched tale of a global diaper shortage, a halt in the production of Huggies Pull-Ups for big kids like him. Now, it’s not that I condone white lies to kids, it’s that I condone selective truths. At least, that’s what I tell myself when I’m lying shell-shocked in my own fetal position. And as Liam admires his new digs emblazoned with the likes of Thomas the Tank Engine and Lighting McQueen, I have to concoct more stories. I can’t tell him that he has to keep his undies dry because Daddy doesn’t want to do a dozen single-article laundry loads every day. That’s just asking for trouble. So I turn to the stories and faux rationale:

“Hey, bud, did you know we have to keep Thomas dry? That’s because he only runs on train food like coal. We don’t want to make him sad, right?”

[Thirty minutes later]

“Ugh. Okay, take two, let’s keep Lightning McQueen squeaky clean. We don’t want him to get dirty and break his engine! Let’s help him win the race by telling me when you have to go potty!”

[Fifteen minutes later]

“You did it! Good job, kiddo! Wash your hands and grab your candy. Look how happy Lightning is!”

[Five minutes later]

“Oh, you have to go potty again? You didn’t get it all out last time? Okay, here we go”

[Five seconds later]

“You have to go again?! We just put Lightning on again! Oh, you just like the M&M? No, no, don’t cry, I’ll hold up my end of the bargain. No, ‘bargain.’ It’s like a deal. A deal. Never mind, let’s go potty.”

***

Needless to say, it’s quite a tangled web. I lose track of this invented impromptu toilet mythos pretty quickly. And Liam is surprisingly adroit at catch any contradictions or inconsistencies. Regardless of my lapses, he soaks up this instructional nonsense. He’s more leak-proof than the cotton fibers covering his rear. So I go on playing the court jester unapologetically; it seems to be working. He’ll get there. We’ll get there. Together. And an added perk: I’m gathering up enough embarrassing stories for later use when he’s sixteen.