"Hey Google, activate the butt sensor"

“I’m never going to lie to my child”

Ok, that sentiment lasted the length of time it took for my daughter’s personality to develop, and I realized just how strong-willed she was. I had to come up with ways to get her to do things that needed to be done and try to circumvent the hours of argument that inevitably followed.

It hasn’t always worked. Or on occasions, my wife has outed me and declared that “Dad’s lying” but where it’s saving time and energy, she will often still be on board.

Now if you’re reading this and saying, “shame on you for lying to your little girl”, you have not experienced the argumentative monster that I am apparently responsible for. Sometimes it’s just a matter of survival. I will never claim to be the best dad on the planet, but I am going to try to do my best.

So, my daughter developed this habit of dropping her pants. It started when we were potty training her and she was keener to do a “bush wee” where she could just go in the backyard. I should clarify that we limited it to only wees and never allowed the “bush poo” because that would have been a task to clean up.

Over time my daughter has been potty trained but would still randomly drop her pants. Now when it’s just Mom and Dad that is bearable, but it was happening more frequently when people would be over. Not even family, there might be someone here doing work at the house and the six-year-old would start walking around with her bottom-half uncovered.

One morning she started to drop her pants and said, “I want to show the TV my bum”. This was it; I can’t have my television subjected to this sort of abuse. So, I told her to pull her pants up and advised her that I would have to activate the butt sensor.

“Hey Google, turn on the butt sensor”

I made sure I said it loud enough that the Google Hub didn’t hear my command. Otherwise, it would have replied, “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to help with that”.

I then explained, “Ok, from now on if the TV detects your butt on display it will turn off for an hour”.

This resulted in a very sharp pulling up of pants and immediate facing away from the TV. There were then the cries of “Dad, turn it off, turn off the butt sensor!”

I then had to go into further detail and address additional concerns:

• The butt sensor would not activate if it detected a butt that was covered with clothes
• The butt sensor would not activate if it detected Max’s (her stuffed cat toy) butt
• The butt sensor would not activate if she farted at it
• The butt sensor would not activate if she danced while wiggling her butt

There was still a little dismay being expressed. “But Dad, please turn off the butt sensor”. So, I followed up with, “Why?” and her answer was of course, “Because I want to show the TV my butt”.

Now, this was a great opportunity to segue into a discussion about protective behaviors, how we don’t show our privates to other people, other people shouldn’t be showing us their private parts, and we shouldn’t let people talk us into showing them our bodies. See, I’m not a complete monster.

I told her that the butt sensor worked for Mom and Dad’s butts as well. I said if she needed, I could test it with my butt, but again she screamed out “NOOOOOOOO!”

On further examination, it turned out that her greater concern was that dad’s butt smells bad, but she also didn’t want the TV turned off for an hour.

No doubt in years to come when I tell her that the butt sensor was made up, she’ll be grumpy, but for now, I’m going to have a degree of confidence that when the guy comes around in half an hour to fix the dishwasher he’s not going to be getting mooned by my daughter.

Thanks for reading, no children were harmed in the making of this story, although that may be re-assessed in 20 years depending on what she says to her psychologist.

Please feel free to like, comment, or donate towards those psychologist fees in advance.