Some people know fine wines and can tell you what type it is, where it comes from and from what year it is. Me, I love mustard. Just like Jack's fridge in Fight Club, mine is filled with various brands of it. Both the granulated and non-types from Dijon. The classic hot-dog version. Honey-Mustard from Russia. I could go on.
Nothing gives me more pleasure than savouring a good slice of dark bread with a thin but evenly spread of the mustard I am keen at the moment to taste.
But it wasn't always like this. Sadly, there was a time in my life where I couldn't look at mustard and not smell shit.
This was a time when my parents decided to give me a sister, and somehow delegated me as diaper-boy before she went to bed at night. I'm not sure how their logic worked in this, really. Their perspective was that, she was my sister and I had a part in her raising and upbringing. I hadn't asked for one, didn't take part in making her and most of all, just could not understand how diaper-changing would dramatically change her world for the better.
Changing diapers is an extremely difficult and near-impossible task. The action per se, mind you, is pretty straightforward. Take baby, put him or her on changing station, undress him or her, remove diaper, dispose of diaper, baby-wipe the naughty bits, apply oil and talcum powder, insert new diaper, close and re-dress baby.
Of course, babies are pretty active little buggers. Unless they are high on cough syrup, actually getting them to stay still on the changing station is as easy as making a live salmon stay on top of your kitchen counter.
All of this of course is mind-boggling. The average baby can hardly move and yet, when on the changing station, is capable of hauling itself off of it and fall to the ground. Maximum attention is therefore required if you do not want a retarded sibling. Learn from my mistakes.
At this point, with one hand holding the squirming little bugger, you carefully remove the tiny sticky straps that hold the diaper closed. While it is always a marvel to see how two pieces of tape can hold a diaper ready to explode together, this is not the right moment to marvel at such engineering simplicity.
You open the diaper and you are greeted by the atrocious smell of liquefied feces. The worse part, for me, is that it had the same colour and texture of mustard. It has always amazed me how an intestine that could be defined as virgin can produce the sort of thing you'd expect in yours after eating at McDonalds. At this point, you are tempted to let go of everything and dunk your face in the toilet to release your dinner, raise your eyes to the lord and scream, "WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME!" Unfortunately, you have to somehow do the following: hold the baby, prevent baby's feet from splashing into the diaper causing a wave effect that will land all over you, remove the diaper, avoid vomiting all over the creature.
The only way to remove the diaper safely is to grab the baby's feet and hold him up like a chicken. You will easily slide the diaper off and find yourself with your baby-chicken in one and a bomb in the other that makes Anthrax look like the common cold. While it is tempting to open a window and throw the chemical explosive out of it, you can't risk leaving the child alone. It will successfully fall off the changing station and land with a smashing sound to the ground.
If this happens, your thoughts get around the fact that the creature is screaming like a siren and won't it please shut the fuck up more than the fact that your sibling will suffer eternal brain damage. Brain damage is easy to spot once your sibling grows up by dressing weird, saying incomprehensible things, has TV commercials memorized and generally wreaking havoc on anything that happens to be your property.
You quickly put the child back on the changing station, lift the legs, pretend nothing happened and proceed in cleaning out the naughty bits with baby-wipes. Unfortunately actually getting a baby-wipe out with one hand is not a task for the tame. The best way of doing it is to grab the baby-wipe, which will be followed immediately by the container. Then give the wipe a good yank. You'll be left with a handful of them. You can find out where the container landed later.
Done that, it's time to put some oil. You'll have to master opening the oil with your teeth since the other hand is being used in keeping the baby still. Apply a few drops, most of which will slide past your wrist and disappear down to your underwear.
Now it's time for the talcum powder. Be advised that if you use the teeth technique to open the darned thing and you're squeezing it too hard, talcum powder has a pretty nasty taste. You'll pretty much forget about applying it after that.
You're almost done. Now you realize you didn't grab the new diaper from the package, so with the aid of your foot, you get it close enough so you can reach for one. Unwrapping one is not as difficult as when it comes to closing it. With two hands and the baby staying still, this is a joke. Placing the little sticky tabs with one hand (the other holding your squirming sibling) has the same straining effects as forty kilometre marathon. On average, it takes about six tries to get the right tightness.
Here is a quick way to determine if the diaper is on incorrectly: if the baby's legs turn purple, it's on too tight. If the diaper suffers leakage, it's on too loose.
You're done! At this point, for having suffered through this deed and having done it almost correctly, you'll feel like the Good Samaritan. Peace will envelop you; however, a dark slice of bread with a thin but evenly spread layer of mustard won't taste the same for a long, long while.
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