Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Magoo likes to wait. It’s not that he has great patience, because I assure you he has no more patience than any other boy of the 3-year-old variety. He just likes to put things off. He takes after me, someone who’s been known to say, “I’m too busy to procrastinate right now. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Magoo doesn’t want to do anything practical or boring if there’s even an ounce of fun to be had in the world, even a smidgen of fun going on without him. Magoo does not want to miss the boat to party time. He’d rather miss food for several hours, sleep for a couple of days, or potty breaks for a week. Starvation, sleep-deprived delirium, and soggy drawers are nothing to him as long as he’s having fun.

While we were riding the ferry today with some vacationing relatives, I watched Magoo graduate from the rap star grab to the full-on pee pee dance.

“Magoo, do you need to go potty?” I asked.

“No,” he shook his head as he danced from side to side and darted meaningful glances at his teenaged male cousins.

With 7 cousins to entertain him, 5 of them BIG BOYS, Magoo knew that if he took the time for a potty break, he’d be tragically left out of some ground-breaking bit of masculine hilarity. What if one of them chased another little kid while he was on the pot, or pulled candy out of his pocket and had no one to give it to, or raised his eyebrows or did some other mind-blowing trick Magoo’s parents could never hope to replicate? What then? Nothing. That’s what. Magoo would be left with nothing but a broken heart, an empty bladder, and a dry pair of pants. All would be lost.

Magoo shed a few tears during a forced potty break, and I even managed to wash his hands in the public restroom before he burst forth in search of more raucous good times. Lately he’s taken to eliminating hand washing from his agenda in an effort to shave seconds off his potty time.

“Okay. I’ll go potty but not wash hands, okay?”

"Mmm…tempting, buuuut…nope. Personal hygiene post-contact-with-fecal-matter is a must in this establishment.”

It’s because I love him and I love health and I am the cruelest of all mothers. So cruel, in fact, that if our life were a Disney movie, there’d be no chance I were his actual mother, but rather an evil stepmother with crazy hair and a creepy-evil, gravelly voice.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to have an evil stepmother around here to not-so-gently guide me away from my chronic procrastination, someone who’d force me to get things done or else face life in the cellar with the rats. I think the threat of rats might just be what it would take to get me on task.

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