My city is your toilet

People often ask me how I get the ideas for what I write here. The truth is that for the most part things just happen and I am just left to report them. I rarely have to sweat it out thinking of what to say because life continually presents moments that leave me speechless.

And today proved to be one of the best speechless moments I have experienced in a very long time. Early this morning a pregnant woman with a small boy presented my next story right out of the blue.

I was walking to my 8:15 doctor's appointment on a downtown street in Ra'anana. There weren't a lot of people on the streets yet, however I noticed a woman and a small boy who was probably two-years old. Normally that wouldn't be such a big deal but in this case it was because the boy wasn't wearing anything other than a T-shirt.

The woman, who I can only assume was his mother, looked normal enough. She was nicely dressed which led me to believe that she could afford pants for her child. She didn't look spaced out so it's not as if she forgot to put some sort of bottoms on him. But here it was, not even 8:30 and this little kid was just out on the sidewalk having a nice stroll without pants, diaper, or underwear.

I am sure if feels great to be out walking around without pants -- if you are two. A nice cool morning breeze to air out your privates. Who could ask for more than that? And I am not a prude. Naked little kids are fine -- in places where nudity seems within the boundaries of propriety. The backyard. Maybe the beach -- although you could get one heck of a sunburn on your nether regions.

See what I mean? I could never have come up with this line of thought on my own. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried for a week. It never would dawn on me to write about a kid without his pants. However, that is exactly what happened.

I knew almost immediately that I wasn't going to be able to simply let this go and walk by as if there wasn't a pantless kid a few feet from me. So .... as I passed the woman, I asked her in hebrew where her son's pants were. I would have asked why he wasn't wearing pants but I wasn't sure I could say that properly in hebrew so I opted for the simpler question.

I am sure she was surprised but she told me that she was toilet training him, so rather than run the risk of wetting his pants (like he would be the first child on earth to do THAT), she simply didn't put any pants on him.

On the face of it, it almost sounded reasonable for a brief moment. But speaking on no one's behalf but my own, that is the most warped logic I have heard in a very long time. I can understand taking that approach in one's own backyard, but on the city streets????

Essentially, she had decided that it was better for her child to walk around pooping and peeing anywhere he wanted -- just so long as it wasn't in his pants. She was using my city as her son's toilet. Can you imagine if every toilet-training child in town was allowed to do this? We'd be living in the middle of the sewer in about three days. You would have to wear Wellies all year round -- and a nose plug. The rats would think they had died and gone to rat hell -- all smack dab in the middle of God's country.

Frankly I had no idea what to say next, so I just nodded half sympathetically and half incredulously -- and then I walked away. I hope she didn't mistake my disbelieving smile for complicity. I was simply trying to keep my face suitably neutral so she wouldn't know how mortified I was.

I am still not really sure what to make of the whole matter but since it is now 12 hours later I guess I am just going to have to let it go. And I am going to avoid the sidestreets of downtown Ra'anana until enough time has passed that I figure this kid has been toilet trained.