Outhouse v. Pork-a-Potty: Who Can Win

We live in a perpetual loop of the Shrek Musical at my house.  Tyler is particularly expert at impersonating Pinocchio, and Tuck has a strong awareness, shall we say, of Sutton Foster.

We were watching or listening or reliving a reprise of our own when Tyler said, “I just love it when Shrek breaks through the walls at the beginning when we see him for the first time.  It’s like we forget what he looks like, and then they show us, and it’s so great all over again.”

“Oh, right -” I jump in.  “When he’s in the outhouse, right?”

“Mommy, it’s not an outhouse.”

“Yes it is.”

“No, it isn’t.

(Some version of those last two sentences occur in every single dialogue between Tyler and me.)

“Honey, it’s an outhouse.”

“It’s a port-a-potty.”  Which he happens to call a Pork-a-Potty.

“No, a port-a-potty is one you can move and an outhouse stays in one place.”

“And they move it later in the show.”

He has a point.

“But in the story, it’s in his swamp.  He wouldn’t have created a plastic bathroom he could move around in his swamp.”

“But later on in the dragon scene, the toilet isn’t there.  They moved it.  So it’s a port-a-potty.”

He has a strong point, if we’re talking props and scenes.  If we’re talking actual Story, then clearly it’s an outhouse.  At some point, both now and in the conversation with my child, I asked myself, “Why am I still talking about this?”

Good grief.  If you need us, we’ll be arguing.