It occurred to me late one morning that I may have lost all sense of what TMI (Too Much Information) might look like to people who aren’t parents. Let me explain. I was sitting in my living room on my laptop staring at a very detailed account of my daughter’s recent diarrhea issues. Now while this would be fine were I sending it out to Dustin or maybe a fellow parent experiencing similar problems, but I was not. I was sending this information to my boss… Luckily, a strange and bizarre thought happened to cross my mind before I hit the send button, that maybe just maybe they really didn’t need to know all that. I wish I could say I’ve always managed to successfully stop myself from spilling disgusting details before it was too late, but that’s just not the case.

So what happened? When did I lose my TMI indicator? I don’t recall ever having causally discussed bowel moments or the contents of vomit with people in the past. In fact those subjects were downright taboo! But now, without prompting I can divulge a wealth of potty knowledge I didn’t even know I had. I can turn my gag reflex off at the sight of a small child vomiting and come to the rescue hands cupped to catch the overflow of half digested hot dogs and cheez its.

It’s definitely a transition that occurs. I don’t believe the TMI indicator dies immediately upon becoming a parent. I think that perhaps it’s a slow death. It begins when you experience that first baby poop in all it’s icky sludge like glory. Your non-parent self recoils, but your new responsible parental-self deals with it anyway. Then comes the vomit and at that young stage of your parental metamorphosis you quickly change out of whatever article of clothing that has become contaminated. Later your newly emerging parental-self gets to experience urine, poop, vomit, and mucus at varying stages of your child’s development and sometimes all at the same time. It’s at these moments that the TMI indicator dies a little. So by the time your sleep deprived snot, pee, poop, bile encrusted fully grown parental-self is in the store at 2am buying more Tylenol and the girl at the register feels compelled to ask how you’re doing, it’s pretty much a given that all sense of your TMI indicator has been destroyed. Because frankly, you don’t care anymore.

I think that might be part of it. Maybe the first stage. But there’s another side to it. It’s not like I exude mass disgusting details on purpose because I don’t care what others think. It’s just become a regular factor of being a parent. It’s the norm. So if I’m being asked how my daughter is, I tend to air on the side of the TMI. Logically, my brain is telling me that by imparting this wealth of information to you I am preparing you for something that might happen soon and these very vivid details are my way of letting you know what to look out for, what could have lead to it, what may have caused it to become worse, and what ultimately helped make it go away. My old non-parent self knows that you don’t want to know this information, but my new parental-self thinks you need to know it anyway.

So if you are a non-parent and have friends who are parents and you hear us start to go down the TMI path. Just remember that our TMI indicators have new thresholds or are ultimately broken and everything we’re about to tell you is for your own damn good! But, we’re sorry anyway…