Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Some Unexpected Help

On Saturday, there was a huge KOTESOL (Korea Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) conference in Seoul. KNU requires us to go to one of these every semester. They're actually pretty fun, and we get some good teaching ideas. For the last few years, Sarah and I have brought Emma along and made a family day of the trip. We take turns watching Emma during lectures.
During one of the lectures, Emma had to go to the bathroom, and I was on duty. Just as we got to the bathrooms, I ran into Aaron Jolley, one of my old soccer buddies. While we were talking, Emma went into the girls bathroom to do her business. After a few minutes, we heard Emma calling out for help, "Daddy, I went poopoo. Come here." The thing is, she can go to the bathroom by herself when she's just going potty, but she hasn't quite mastered the behind the back clean up task yet.
I had just seen another woman walk into the bathroom, so I figured I could just wait until the coast was clear and rush in to help Emma while Aaron stood guard. I called into the bathroom, "Just wait a minute Emma. Don't get up. Daddy will come in when the other ladies leave."
Bad luck for us. Some other women decided that this was their time also. It looked like a long wait was ahead of us.
But suddenly Emma was coming out drying her hands on her shirt and pulling up her suspenders. This was a little disturbing to me. I thought I was going to have a pretty good mess to clean up.
I asked her, "Emma, did you wipe off?"
She answered, "No, a lady did it."
"A woman in the bathroom helped you wipe off?"
"Uh-huh."
So Emma invited some woman whom neither she nor I had ever seen before to enter her stall and wipe her bottom. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I still don't know who that lady is, but I guess I'm grateful for the help.

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