Poop

(While I’m out of the country, I’m reposting some content from my archives. This one was originally published in the fall of 2004. I thought we’d play a bit with the Boone theme.)

Last week I had a huge portion of my extended family in town for the wedding of one of my cousins, perhaps The Prettiest Man on Earth. See:

It’s weird calling him a man because I always think of Tim Boone (named after our uncle) as this little curly headed punkin-head who was too shy to talk to his cousin Heather. I also always think of him as a two-year-old clutching to his life as he was hurled down a steep incline inside a tire by one of my other mean cousins. ALL BOONES ARE MEAN, just in case you ever encounter one.

I got to spend some time with family that I haven’t seen in months and years which is always good because whenever I spend time with Boones there is always content to bring back to this website. And Internet, have I got content for you.

I promised that I wouldn’t reveal the identity of the person who plays the protagonist in this story. I can say that I am related to him and that he is a very good person despite what happened to him, despite what I am about to tell you. Let’s call him C. because that’s the first letter that comes to my mind when I think of this epic story about constipation.

C. started telling me this story about a bout of constipation he had without even knowing that I suffer from constipation on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. Boones are always talking about poop and farts and butts and assholes, so a story about constipation seemed like a perfectly good conversation to have over dinner. I was just grateful that he wasn’t showing me his butt because he’s a Boone and YOU JUST NEVER KNOW WITH THOSE PEOPLE.

Moments after he uttered the word “constipated,” I was all, TELL ME MORE.

He had been traveling for a few days, and everyone knows what traveling can do to your bottom system. Pooping while traveling is just anatomically impossible. Your diet gets screwed up, and you have to go to the bathroom on all these funky, foreign commodes with weird, scratchy toilet paper and WHO KNOWS WHOSE BUTT HAS BEEN ON THIS ONE. It’s hard enough for me to poop at a friend’s house, or even at my sister’s house, so you can imagine what my body does in a hotel room, or MY GOD AN AIRPLANE.

If you’re an airplane pooper you’re just not human.

So I understand about constipation brought on by traveling, and I guess C. was at work the day after traveling for a few days, and he found himself IN THE COMPANY BATHROOM (I can hardly type these words without having every single internal organ implode), and That Poop hit him.

He was going to have to pass That Poop at work because it was coming and nothing could stop it. For those of you who have suffered constipation, you know exactly which poop I’m talking about. It’s the one that you can’t physically pass, the one about which your Physics teacher would say, “From what I’ve studied, that is too big to fit out your butt.”

But That Poop disregards reason and measurements and propriety. That Poop walks around waving its middle finger and telling your mom to suck it.

So C. is sitting on the toilet, his pants around his ankles, and That Poop is making it’s way out his butt even though Object A is too big to fit through Object B. And he is in pain, a lot of pain, the pain of a woman feeling the head of her baby crowning through the birth canal. The pain is almost indescribable, and as he is telling me this story I want to hold his hand and assure him that everything is going to be okay because I HAVE FELT THAT PAIN. Also, how about we order a Metamucil chaser.

Somehow Object A passes through Object B, don’t ask me how, don’t ask any scientist how because no one can prove how it happened. And he is sitting there with his pants around his ankles trying to deal with the pain. There is no one there to scream at, no one’s hand to hold, and he couldn’t really moan out loud, not at work, not in the bathroom at work.

And the pain of having defied science is just too much, and he starts to shake from the pain, and he starts to get nauseous from the pain, the pain, the pain. And with his pants still around his ankles HE BLACKS OUT FROM THE PAIN.

Imma let you think about that for a second.

Now, here’s where the details get a little fuzzy, because he blacks out, and when you black out you don’t know what is going on because you’re not conscious. But he wakes up, OH MY GOD, he wakes up with his pants around his ankles, his BARE BUTT facing out the opening under the stall door, his bare butt lying out like an art project on the floor in the bathroom at work.

So he wakes up, and I don’t know if I have mentioned this, but his bare butt is peeking out from underneath the stall door, and he doesn’t know how long he has been lying there. His legs are shaking, his legs being tied together because his pants are still pulled down around his ankles. So he pulls himself up, does an inspection of the area, cleans up his mess, pulls up his pants and leaves the stall. He still doesn’t know how long he’s been in there or WHO HAS COME IN AND SEEN HIS BARE BUTT.

PEEKING OUT.

When he goes to wash his hands he sees the damage. Dear God, people. The damage. There is blood all over his face, a gash in his forehead, a slice from his glasses cutting into his face. Apparently when he blacked out from the pain he hit the tile floor WITH THIS HEAD. His hands did not stop him, he just went head first. But then, then! His head must have bounced because it hit the tile so hard that he hit the tile again with the side of his face, then rolling over to let any and all coworkers have a glimpse of his Object B, his big white bare butt.

I was in tears at this story, tears of pain and recognition. Not because I’ve ever passed out from a bout of constipation, but because my constipation has caused me similar humiliating circumstances. C. had to go to the Emergency Room and have his face repaired, from falling over because he pooped too big.

He never found out if anyone had come in to find his limp and naked body on the floor. I asked him what he told people when they saw the blood on his face and he said, “Well, I told them I got sick and passed out. What was I supposed to say, ‘I fell over from pooping?'”