Christmas collateral for Collin ~ December 28, 1995

David Heiller

  One of the first things my nephew, Collin, asked when he awoke at our house last Saturday morning was if he could ride on my tractor. He remembered doing that last Christmas, which isn’t bad for a three year old.

So he climbed up onto my lap on the Oliver 66, and we went careening down County Road 168, Collin steering and me trying not to smile too much.

Then a little later, he asked if he could use the outhouse. We have an indoor bathroom, but I still like the outhouse. Maybe Collin’s way of saying thank you for the tractor ride was to pay his respects to my outhouse.

Collin, mid-leap

So I smiled again and we put on boots and coats and walked between snowbanks to the outhouse. It’s a two-holer, which fascinated Collin. He couldn’t make up his mind, which for some people could be a disaster, myself included. He had to open each cover to make an inspection of the contents. Then he chose the one on the left.

Before he sat down, I asked him if he wanted to use the potty chair. It has hung on a nail in our outhouse ever since Malika outgrew it seven years ago. A morning glory vine was entwined around it.

It’s a pretty classy potty chair, made of wood, with wooden arms and even two straps with which to secure the child. I’ve never figured out the purpose of those straps. Maybe it was a way to punish little junior in the good old days. “Eat your supper or I’ll strap you into the potty chair!”

For Collin, it was love at first sight. I untangled the vines, and set it on the toilet seat, and Collin pulled himself up and eased himself down and didn’t even complain when his rear end came in contact with some very chilly wood.

He said he wanted to take the potty chair home, and I said fine, knowing how much his mom and dad would like that, so he carried it into the house. “Maybe we can stain it and make it look pretty,” I told him.

“What’s stain?” he asked.

“It’s like painting,” I answered. Collin said he liked to paint. So I placed the potty chair over the wood stove, where Collin would be able to admire it all weekend and dream of staining.

The tractor and the potty chair became important collateral with Collin for the next two days. You need collateral for kids like Collin, who has an uncanny sense of stubbornness. He’s like a pair of Wells-Lamont gloves: stubbb-born! For example, he usually just plain refuses to eat at meal time. His lower lip puffs out, and he gets the saddest look, like a prisoner heading into the gas chamber, a prisoner who hasn’t eaten his last supper.

More than once, I coaxed Collin into eating by reminding him about future tractor rides. If that didn’t work, I mentioned how fun it was going to be to stain the potty chair, if he cleaned his plate.

Most of the time it worked. But not with the pajamas on Sunday night. We were getting ready to open presents, and Collin’s parents told him to put on his pajamas. He insisted that his mother help him. But his mother told him that she was busy, and that Dad would help.

That meant it was Wells-Lamont time for Collin. Out came the lip and the hang-dog look of utter despair. He wanted his mother to help him put on his pajamas! Dad wasn’t good enough, Cindy wasn’t good enough, Malika wasn’t good enough. Even the tractor and potty chair didn’t budge him.

Fine, he was told calmly, then he just wouldn’t get to open his presents.

It didn’t take Collin long to figure out that those presents were the heaviest collateral he had faced in his three years of life. Forget the tractor and the potty chair. This was Collateral with a capital C.: a pile of booty three feet high that he had been shaking and squeezing for the past 36 hours.

Truly and truly, Collin and David were "Brothers for life". I think they still are.

So he sheepishly asked if his Uncle David could help him with his pajamas, and I carefully considered the question and answered yes, and tried not to grin again.

Then Christmas hit full force, with presents unwrapped and toys revealed and wrapping paper everywhere, and a general blur of holiday cheer and non-stop eating and groaning and trips to the outhouse which finally cleared Sunday evening, when Collin asked if he could stain the potty chair.

So I took out two brushes, and he spread newspapers on the kitchen table, and we stained the potty chair, Collin and I. That sealed our bond. Once you stain a potty chair with somebody, you are brothers for life.

Collin proved that point a little later, after he had taken a bath, and Mr. Wells-Lamont didn’t want his dad to help him put on his pajamas. He had to have Uncle David, and this time I did so with a smile, although I forgot to pull on his underpants, which he gently pointed out. 

Hey, nobody’s perfect.