I've only got one thing on my mind.

I live in a world of poop. I didn't always live here. Except for the occasional bout of gastrointestinal distress, I thought about poop once, or maybe twice, a day. When I got married that really didn't change. Having a dog did up the poop factor a bit, but once we got a house with a yard, I only had to think about it before mowing. Then they came and changed everything.

When you have kids, poop is on your mind all the time. It starts right out of the gate. Yes, doctors call it meconium, but it's just a fancy word for "poop in the womb." Once that's taken care of, every conversation for days is "Will the baby poop? Has the baby pooped? Oh, the baby pooped! What was it like? What color was it? When will the baby poop again?" Onward and onward until you're just plain pooped out.

And it doesn't get any better when they get older. Before every trip (be it to Grandma and Grandpa's across the state, the zoo across town or to the supermarket down the street) you have to think about poop again. "Did he poop? Was it a big one or a little one? Well, if it was a little one, we better make sure to bring a diaper, the wipes, a change of clothes and something to clean up the car seat because I'm sure he's got a big one brewing in there." You used to jump into the car and run to the store for ice cream. Now you pack yourself down like you're trekking across the Andes just to pick up more Huggies.

Potty training brings the poop factor up a notch with the constant worry of underwear losing the battle against the poop and the constant sight of children dashing across the room after they whisper, "I have to poop." Why is it that they scream all day about everything, but when they have something important to say, like "Father Dearest, the Great Deluge of Poop is about to erupt from my butt," they have to whisper as quietly as they can? Then finally, after a few weeks (or months or years) they are trained, and you think, "No more worrying about poop for me!" But you are so wrong.

Now that I have two kids out of diapers I get to deal with them vying for the attention of the bathroom. Something about hearing the bathroom door shut puts their colons on overdrive. The bathroom door slowly opens, and they slip in.

"Daddy, I need to poop."

"Can you hold it, honey? Just for a second?" This is met with 30 seconds of staring at me before they speak.

"No."

"Well, why don't you use the bathroom upstairs?" More staring.

"I don't wanna."

"Well, can you get out and let me finish? I'll just be a second." More staring. I can see the little gears in their head working.

"Daddy, I need to poop." And the cycle begins again.

If I could have taken all my poop thinking time and instead thought about something important, I could have changed the world. Instead, I'm just changing diapers.