About a month ago, Benji find he’d saved about $30 in his allowance. That kind of cash doesn’t sit around for long; we promptly went to the toy store to blow that wad on Legos and Douglas stuffed animals.

While we were there perusing the stuffed animal selection, what should we see but a large-ish plush poop emoji with a happy smile and hearts for eyes. Benji immediately latched onto it, not for himself, but because he felt that Daddy needed this stuffed poop. Could we please buy it as a present for Daddy?

I said we had to have some holiday or some reason to give it to him. Not surprisingly, I thought idea of giving the poop emoji a permanent home was pretty crappy. I wanted to find a way to squeeze out of it… But I also kind of wanted to see what Ian would do if presented with such an excretory gift.

He wanted to know when Daddy’s birthday was — January. Oh. That’s a long time.

What about Christmas? Oh, December is still a long time.

Finally I took pity on him and admitted that our wedding anniversary was on August 9, not that far off. I said that we could buy it for Daddy as an anniversary gift representative of our marriage. (Don’t worry, that’s not actually the case.)

We agreed to not tell Ian about this plan, and amazingly, Benji only ever mentioned it when we were alone.

Last Wednesday after I got my tattoo, I was home earlier that usual. It was the perfect opportunity! I whisked Benji off to the toy store. The entire way there he fretted that someone might have already coughed up the dough for the poop. I couldn’t decide if that would be good or bad, in the long run.

Fears aside, the heart eyes poop remained available. Sales of plush poop emojis must have been a little constipated since we last were there, but we got things moving again with our purchase.

I had them gift-wrap it, which was amusing–the teenage boy doing the wrapping had no idea how to wrap a plush triangle–and off we went home to deliver our load.

To his credit, Benji managed to not say what it was, and he let Ian open it. When Ian got the wrapping paper off, all my doubts were blown out the window. Ian literally was speechless for minutes, and then he started laughing hysterically for longer. I have never seen him so surprised, astonished, or delighted at a joke. It was well worth the cost of the poop just for the first five minutes after it came out.

And that is how we now have a plush poop emoji, which Ian generally shares with Benji.