The Random Button on blog sites

Hitting the Random Button on blog sites can send you into dark alleys of the information superhighway disguised as Mommy Blogs, where you find more talk about pee and poop – and sometimes photos of children on potty chairs – than you would think possible.

Frankly, I’m not that interested in the toilet habits of toddlers, so I read very few mommy blogs. I always wonder who is so interested in looking at small children on potty chairs, and why anyone would indulge that interest by posting such things on the world wide web. I find the whole thing more than a little creepy – from taking such a photo to posting it online to looking at it. Just because digital cameras make it possible to capture every moment, doesn’t mean you should.

Of course, for reasons that escape me, parents have been doing this for years. And, those of us who have dated the grown up men who’s personal moments were documented by their parents are put in the difficult position of figuring out what to say when confronted with the photographic evidence that the man we’re dating wasn’t always potty trained. “You freaks, why would you take a photo like this of your baby?” is not appropriate. Just in case you were wondering.

It’s not like we thought he was so perfect that he came out of the womb potty trained, but we don’t need to see it. Some things are things we know intellectually, and that’s all the experience we need with it. We know he clips his toenails, too, but we don’t want to see it. Eeeewww… (I’m particularly disgusted by toenails, for reasons I don’t understand. Hey, we all have our hangups.)

And why do the parents always want to show you the photo of their little darling on the potty chair decades later? Why? I don’t need to see that. Some things are meant to be private. As of yet, I’ve not had a single man pleased to share the photo with me, but his twisted parents get some joy out of it. Obviously.

With the advent of blogs, now they can spread this joy world wide. It’s creepy. And I won’t make the mistake of hitting the random button again anytime soon.