The Smelling of the Arse

Picture the scene.

You’re sat at the dinner table with your partner, and either your or their parents. You’ve prepared a lovely dinner for everyone and as you’re halfway through the main course of a meal throughout which you’ve been regaling your family with some tale about that annoying fella at work, or this totally unbelievable thing that you saw today when you take a quick sniff of the air.

Then another.

And then your partner does the same.  

You both look at each other.

You then turn to ones of your guests and rhetorically ask - because you already know the answer - in a cutesy voice, “Have you shat yourself?”

And then you pick them up and smell their arse.

Wait, what?

Sounds weird, right? Except, in the past six months it’s a practice that’s become frighteningly normal. Although admittedly, it’s not mine’s or Jenny’s parents’ arse that I’ve been having a sniff of. It’s my son’s.

Now, I’ve done this so many times over the past half a year and I don’t even bat an eyelid anymore (unless it’s a particularly stinky nappy in which case I go blind for a few seconds) but this strangest thing is this form of doo doo deduction isn’t even that weird to the assembled masses. Well, those who already have kids anyway. God knows what childless folk think of it.

When you think about it as a rational human being, it’s disgusting. You’re literally sticking your nose as close as humanly possible to the rear end of someone you’re already pretty certain has soiled their britches.  I don’t know about you but if my wife, mother, father, anyone came up to me with an inkling that they’d shat themselves my first thought would not be to immediately smell their arse. I’d laugh my own arse off, sure. But smell yours? I’m not a dog.

“Here, mate. I think I’ve shit myself. Would you smell my arse and check?”

*dials 999*

Yet when it comes to Isaac I’m become a connoisseur of crap. I can tell whether this nappy will be a fairly solid one, or a dreaded wet one. I can tell the difference between a lingering wet fart smell and a definite poo. Yet despite my refined olfactory senses, I still defer to my wife to see what she thinks. It becomes something akin to a wine tasting – “Hmmm, it has nutty aroma that causes a sting in the back of the throat. And eyes.”

I don’t know why The Smelling of the Arse is such a big thing. It’s not like poo isn’t a distinctive smell. I mean, everyone knows what shit smells like.

And it ain’t roses.