Un cuento: I did it!

You know? It turns out that telling your colleague "I pooped!" is a great motivator to remember the past tenses of the verb hacer once and for all. 

All week long I had been stumbling over the simple past tense of simple verbs, including hacer, decir, poder, poner, and others that I use every day.  Yesterday, Alicia and I were teaching our afternoon English workshop to the chiquititos when one of the little ones said something about caca (poop). "Tienes que hacer caca? Do you have to poop?" Nope...nope, she already did. I brought her back to her class to hand her over for a clothing change, and on the way I decided that I wanted to mention that she didn't tell me ahead of time, but couldn't recall the past tense of decir fast enough. So, I decided I would just use the third person present tense - dice. No me dice. She doesn't tell me. 

Okay. Got it. Here I go.

Valentina! Hice caca! Valentina! I pooped! 

She was so kind, and gently corrected me. 

Se hizo caca? She pooped her pants?

And that, folks, is a benefit (?) to having Spanish-speaking coworkers, and how I will finally remember the difference between first person simple past and third person simple past for the verb hacer. And of decir for that matter.