I don’t think I ever liked having to get an enema when I was growing up. When I was quite small mom would use a bulb syringe and I really didn’t know to expect it until too late as I would already be in the bathroom and positioned over her lap. For the longest time my enemas were only with a single bulbful, but eventually it became two.

Both my older as well as my younger sister got enemas as well although I don’t remember Carol as much as Emily. Emily was my younger sister and from what I remember always loved getting an enema. Afterwards she would always come find me in my room and announce that she had just gotten one. One day after getting one she appeared and told me that mom was planning to give me one. This was unusual because Emily never had been previously privy to that information.

When I asked her how she knew, she said that mom had brought a cooking pot into the bathroom and was using it to prepare warm soapy water and that she watched as mom poured it into the combination syringe. I wasn’t certain about what she was telling me because I had never received an enema from the bag before.

Shortly thereafter mom called me to the bathroom. Nothing seemed unusual until she closed the door and there was a red bag hanging from hook on the back with its red hose and black nozzle. I had previously seen it out drying over the faucets in the bathtub but never associated it with the dreaded enema.

By now I had figured everything out and told her, “I don’t want an enema. Let me try to go. I know I can.”

“OK, I’ll give you a few minutes so go ahead and try.”

I sat to the toilet and tried my best. Nothing! So, I sat there for a good 10 minutes hoping and praying that my bowels would produce some quantity that mom would find acceptable and let me escape what was increasingly appearing to be my fate.

After waiting what seemed like an eternity, she announced that the time had come for me to assume the position over her knees. Ever so reluctantly I accepted the inevitable. A dab of Vaseline lubed my bum and the nozzle was inserted.

“Take it out! Take it out! It hurts!”

“No, it doesn’t hurt!” she told me. “Now just relax.”

Then it was a little click, and I could feel a sense of warmth entering me. “That’s enough! That’s enough!” I cried.

“No, you need to take more. You haven’t made potty for four days now and this will help you go,” she told me. “Now take some nice deep breaths and that will make it go easier.”

Between bouts of crying, I did breathe as she said. I’m not sure that it helped because I laid there and the enema continued to flow out of that bag and into my insides. The minutes seemed to pass more like hours and I just kept wanting this ordeal to be over and done with.

Finally, mom said, “OK, you have probably taken enough. She removed the nozzle and kept me over her knees with her right hand squeezing my cheeks together assuring that the enema would be adequately retained. I could feel its warm, soapy solution churning away and increasingly I was looking forward to the opportunity to sit on the potty.

Then it was the moment of truth as mom let me get off her lap and move to the toilet. It seemed like only nanoseconds later that the warm water came streaming out of me and with it an untold amount of poop. In all honesty it felt good at first, but it just kept coming out because after all it was four days worth.

“See,” she began, “That feels really good, doesn’t it? You sure needed a good enema today.”

After getting cleaned up I got dressed and went back to my room. Much to my surprise there Emily was waiting for me. She asked, “Did you like your enema?”

“No, not really,” I told her.

“But it did make you poop, didn’t it?”

My face turned beet crimson with embarrassment as I replied, “Yeah, it really did. Like big time!”

“Did you like it now that mom uses the enema bag for you?”

“No, not really.

“I do.”

“I don’t get it. What is there to like about getting an enema?” I asked.

“It just makes me feel really good. Making a major poop is sort of a happy event and if I was unhappy, I wasn’t any more.”

“That sounds so weird! I guess maybe you’re just lucky because I don’t feel the least bit happy about just getting that enema despite it helping me make a major poop. I don’t like them no how.”

People change and times change! Decades later I find myself writing this account and still cannot believe it!