That’s Awesome by Sean O’Brien

“Don’t sweat the technique” — Eric B. and Rakim

Aside from ninjas and samurai, few people can sneak up on me. I credit my junior varsity basketball coach, Mr. Killackey, for honing that skill. Bobby was a Marine, a skilled infantryman. He knew every tactic and strategy concerning surprise and, more importantly, how to thwart it. He taught us to use our ears as the eyes for the back of our heads.

“If you focus your listening to your surroundings, you’ll hear the defender, the enemy,” he said with an emphasis, “sneaking up behind you. You can even smell them if you get really good,” he said.

Those instructions stuck with me and proved helpful throughout life, especially when I ended up in prison.

Prison is a unique environment. One must remain aware of their surroundings at all times. It’s a necessary survival skill but also demanding and tiresome.

Being jumpy in prison is not a good thing. “Sleep with your good eye open,” one veteran inmate told me. So no one was more surprised than me when old man Blackburn appeared behind me one day asking, “Can I ask you a personal question, O’Brien?” in his froggy voice. He scared the shit out of me, but thankfully, I played it off well enough that no one noticed.

I figured his question would have been something like, ‘have you ever cheated on your wife’ or ‘have you ever slept with a man,’ but it wasn’t. It was more personal, more intimate.

Bobby leaned in towards me so close I could see the blackheads on his bulbous nose as he licked and smacked his cracked and withered lips together. He looked around to make sure no one was ear hustling, then, in a toad whisper, asked, “What’s your wiping technique?”

My wiping technique, I thought, did he just fucking ask me that? Is he serious?

But Bobby was always serious. Bobby was a bore. An old, resentful, bitter stick in the mud.

“My wiping technique?” I repeated back to him in question form.

“Yeah, your wiping technique. Do you wipe from front to back, back to front, side entry? What do you do?”

Side entry? What does that even mean, I thought? What does that look like? I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to know.

“Well, I don’t know Blackburn. I never gave it much thought. When I potty trained my son Killian, I taught him to go from front to back, gentle wipes, until it was clean. But little boys are much different from grown men, Bobby. We have hair down there, decades of use and abuse, hemorrhoids, bad habits, digestive issues, and God knows what else.”

I thought my answer was satisfactory, but he just stood there staring blankly in his signature slouch stance. Creepy. So I continued, “I hope that helps Bobby. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“It does,” he murmured with a melancholy victim stance. He took a deep and disturbing nose gulp, let it out in an audible sigh, and looked away with an air of indifference. But he didn’t leave; he just slouched there, as an awkward teenage kid might.

“Welp,” he finally said, “I asked because, as you may or may not know, I wear a diaper.”

“I did not know that, Bobby. That’s awesome.” I said. “What, like pull-ups?”

“Kinda,” he replied, “adult pull-ups.”

“That’s hot.”

“Well, it’s not like I shit myself or anything like that-”

“No, of course not,” I interjected.

“It’s just that, welp, it gets a little leaky back there at times. I originally used folded-up toilet paper and just stuffed it between my cheeks like a male tampon. But it would fall out from time to time, and I started getting complaints from my celly. Plus, it was nearly impossible to explain myself during strip searches. They never believed me and knew I was a man of God.”

“That’s gross,” I said, “so what, have you run out of diapers or something?”

“Welp, with this Covid-19 craze, medical has been swamped, and they haven’t responded to my request for a refill yet.”

“Refill,” I repeated, “like a prescription refill?”

“Exactly,” Bobby said, “they’re prescription diapers.”

“Really? That’s awesome, Bobby. I would have never guessed they had those. You learn something new every day,” I replied with genuine satisfaction.

He sighed a “yeah,” response with an anvil-sized load of disinterest like I was bothering him.

“I’ve been wearing two sets of boxers in the meantime, but they get streaked and skid-marked considerably.”

Considerably I thought. Does my definition of considerably match his? Again, I didn’t want to know.

“Welp, I’ll usually clean them first on my own and then throw them in the dorm’s laundry bin for a second, proper cleaning.” His head was swiveling at this point, getting lost in his explanation. I thought he might have a seizure. “I guess I threw a dirty pair in the other day, on accident-”

“It’s by accident Bobby.”

“What?”

“You said on accident; the proper phrase is by accident. It’s on purpose and by accident.”

“Says who?”

“Says me.”

“Welp, I ain’t takin no English lessons from a damn Yankee.”

“I reckon you’re not.”

“As I was saying, I guess I threw a dirty pair of boxers in the laundry the other day because I received a complaint. At first, I figured it was one of the machine operators, probably Dino, but it turned out to be one of the laundry folders. Probably that Ed Hall guy; he never liked me. Apparently, one of them was folding my boxers and saw what he called, and I quote, ‘a massive shitstain.’ I saw the I-60 complaint form with my own eyes. As you know, my boss and I collect the I-60s every morning from the box. Typically I’ll run through them first by myself to weed out the ridiculous ones and make her job more manageable. You should see some of the complaints we get. It’s like we’re in daycare, not prison. Welp, she was in one of her moods this morning and made me read each one out loud to her as she watched over my back. It was pretty embarrassing when I got to the one about me.”

“Yeah, I’d think so. That’s terrible, Bobby. I’m so sorry.”

“Yep, it was awful,” he said, shaking his head. “When I explained my situation to her, she suggested I ask someone about their wiping technique, so we don’t run into this situation again.”

“She suggested that?” I asked.

“Yep, I was just as surprised as you.”

“Did she suggest asking me?”

Bobby shook his head no.

“Good, that would have been weird. Well, at least she was helpful and an adult about it.”

“Welp, that depends on what you mean by an adult, I guess,” Bobby said. “On my way out of her office, after I thanked her and wished her a good day, she said, ‘you’re welcome, now get the fuck out of my office and don’t come back until you’re properly potty trained ya little shitstain.’”

“That’s awesome,” I said again.

Bobby dropped his crossed arms to his sides, further slouched, and asked, “are you gonna say ‘that’s awesome’ after everything I tell you?”

“Yeah, I probably will.”