It's in my raccoon wounds!!!

As a humor writer, I'm constantly looking for new material for a column EVERYWHERE. Any funny situation, story, or even just a phrase becomes fair game. I once created an entire column based on two words I heard, and created a 30 minute radio play just so I could create a joke around the line "Dee Butler did it."

However, last week, I was hard pressed to come up with something in spite of having the grossest day of my 8 years of fatherhood. I was holding my 2-year-old son because he was whining that "I growed up in my tummy." I had no idea what he was talking about, so I held him and patted his back.

Big mistake.

This caused him to burp, and then half a second later, to throw up his entire dinner and the 8 ounces of juice he had just drunk 20 minutes earlier. This wasn't just a little spit up. This was a stomach's-entire-contents-hey-when-did-I-have-corn? blowout.

My first thought was the line from the Family Guy episode where the Griffin family enters the Witness Protection Program and goes south: "Oh God. It's everywhere. It's in my raccoon wounds!"

I spent 30 minutes cleaning up my son, me, the carpet, and the desk chair I had been sitting in. I was in the foulest, most grossed out mood I've been in for years. My son, on the other hand, says very happily, "Daddy, I all better now."

Good, son. It is, after all, all about you.

But I can't do a column about it. It would be too embarrassing for my son, and I try to keep some of the more personal aspects of my life out of my column.

So I blogged about it instead!

Luckily, I'm about 4 weeks ahead on my columns, so I'm not lacking for a topic. At least not yet. Maybe I'll feel differently about it when I'm stuck for a topic 2 hours before my deadline. . .