MockMom

5-Year-Old Thinks Poop Joke Is Hilarious

By Andrew Knott of Explorations of Ambiguity

By now you have certainly heard about HBO’s new series, The Young Pope, and more importantly, the hilarious and/or confusing memes and tweets the show has inspired. If you haven’t heard, well, maybe you’re irrelevant or you have a life.

In an attempt to maintain a connection with the outside world despite spending his days isolated from other adults and providing around-the-clock service to miniature versions of himself, Jake, a 35-year-old stay-at-home dad, sought to put his own spin on a new classic.

“I saw the Young Pope thing popping up on Twitter and I had no idea what was going on,” Jake said. “I Googled it and it looked pretty dumb, so I decided to spend my kids’ entire naptime reading articles about it.”

After his Young Pope crash course, Jake ventured to Twitter to take a shot at viral fame. “I thought I had struck gold. My kids had been obsessed with that Shoo Fly song and I was like, ‘Oh man, Young Pope don’t bother me, Young Pope don’t bother me, Young Pope don’t bother me, I belong to somebody!’ I could almost feel the zeitgeist inhabiting my body as I sent the tweet.”

Jake’s tweet got zero likes.

“I was a little bummed,” Jake said, “but later that night, right before bedtime, our baby pooped while she was in her jumper. It was a huge blowout. Of course, my first thought was poop…pope…Young Poop!”

“So, I said to my 5-year-old, ‘Wow! This might be a Young Poop, but there sure is a lot of it.’”

Despite not knowing what HBO or Twitter was, Jake’s son thought his dad’s joke was the best he had ever heard.

“He literally laughed for hours,” Jake said. “Unfortunately, he didn’t really understand the reference, but he loved the poop part. I tried to explain the back story, and then I was nearly crushed by an avalanche of questions.”

“What’s a pope? Why is he young?” Jake’s son asked.

“I told him, ‘That’s the point! No one knows why he is young!’”

As is the case for most days spent parenting, this day turned out to be a true learning experience for Jake.

“This whole thing really opened my eyes. I learned that, while Twitter might not get me, I can always count on my 5-year-old to give a crap about my jokes…see what I did there?”

*****

About the Author

Andrew is a writer from Orlando, Florida. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Higgs Weldon, RAZED, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Defenestration Magazine, Scary Mommy, Flash Fiction Magazine, and Paste Magazine. He also writes on his website, Explorations of Ambiguity, and you can follow him on Twitter and Facebook. His first book, Fatherhood: Dispatches From the Early Years, is available now.