The bottom line
As Leonard Cohen so wisely said, there is a crack in everything …
Bum, butt, rear-end, backside, posterior, derriere. How odd it is that we have so many names for something we don’t like to talk about. Because we’re grown-ups. And if there’s one thing that makes grown-ups grown up it’s the fact that on the topic of bums, we tend to turn the other cheek.
Oh sure, we will notice bums. We will notice every little thing about them. Big ones, small ones, half-exposed ones and oh-my-god-look-at-that-one ones. Because secretly, we are all, in our own way, obsessed with bums. And we always will be. But we don’t like to talk about them.
Which is precisely why kids, bless ’em, love bums. Because a) bums are fun to talk about and b) adults don’t like to talk about them. Down through the ages, kids have been sniggering about bottoms and then sniggering even more when some adult has told them to stop sniggering about bottoms. So good luck to the kiddies, I say. They’ve always been loud and proud, bottom-wise. They are the masters of rear-end humour. They have reduced the art of toilet humour to one word: ‘bum’. They have turned that one little sound into a punch line all on its own.
Adults, being adults, took a long time to cotton on to the power of the ‘b’ word. But once they did, adults, being adults, started flogging it for all it’s worth. Have you looked in the kids’ book section of your local bookshop lately? It’s all bums. Children’s book publishers have gone bum crazy. They’re slapping bums on every book cover they can find. If they keep this up, kids will stop talking bums altogether. They’ll decide that adults are so bum-crazed that it’s just no fun talking bums any more.
I should at this point admit to my own possible bum-related conflict of interest. I have been known to draw pictures for kids books. Yes, I’ve drawn the odd bum or two. I even fear that I had a hand in starting this awful rash of bum books. Many years ago, I was illustrating a book of jokes and riddles for kids. The publishers needed a title for the book and I suggested Yum Yum Pig’s Bum, complete with a cheeky looking pig. It seemed to make sense. It was cute and funny and the book included the old rhyme about pigs’ bums. Well, the publishers were aghast. They told me that the word ‘bum’ couldn’t possibly be used on the cover, cute pig or no cute pig. It was just too rude for a children’s book. ‘Bum’ was too rude? For a children’s book? (And yet ‘Winnie the Pooh’ is just fine? Ah, the mysteries of publishing).
The rest, as they say is history. Within a few years, somebody in the kids’ book game decided ‘bum’ wasn’t too rude after all. The floodgates opened. Bums went psycho, and so on. It was Captain Underpants this and Zombie Bums that. The kiddies were suddenly greeted by entire shelves of bums. Bum writing reached new heights. Even Tim Winton got in on the act.
But I’m not bitter. Far from it. I’ve moved on and my bum has followed. Now that the publishing industry has taken my lead and declared open season on all things bum-related, my arse and I are belatedly out to get a piece of the action. We’ve decided the time is nigh to rework a few children’s classics…to suit today’s bum-obsessed market. You and your kids are going to love Enid Blyton’s Magic Fartaway Tree. And who could possibly resist Breaking Wind in the Willows? And for the younger tykes, we offer the unforgettable Very Hungry Caterpillar’s Bum (complete with strategically placed holes) and, of course, Dr Seuss’s The Cat Shat in The Hat. Childish, I know. But don’t blame me; blame the kiddies. They started it.