Consider It Dung

Halloween is fast approaching, and in the spirit of the holiday, I have decided to dedicate this week to Halloween-based blogs. Exciting, I know.

And to begin this week of frights and delights, I shall regale you with an enthralling tale of terror and dismay. This is beyond your grandfather’s sissy-pansy foo-foo bedtime nightmare stories. This is way beyond the lame campfire ghost stories from your youth spent at Camp Homosexual Experience. This is a true story of horror that will leave you quivering where you sit. Forget stories of ghosts and goblins, vampires and demons. This is a story of something FAR more frightening: Poopie!!!

This story takes place in the not-too-distant past. My past. That’s right, today we discuss something that happened to me. I will begin with a background of the setting and why I have been placed into this predicament of life-altering fear.

I used to work at a grocery store. Simple as that. I started as a minimum-wage paid “Courtesy” member. Courtesy was a fancy way of saying I was everyones bitch. And as such, I was often times on “Clean Up On Aisle Four” duty. And sometime I was on DOODIE duty.

This is one such situation. A crappy one to say the least.

I was enjoying my time shoving carts into the store when I was called over by another member of the grocery team. This particular meeting was to bring to my attention the fact that someone had gotten a little bit of a mess in the bathroom. He informed me this very delicately.

“Dude, someone got shit all over the bathroom!”

Such tact. Such grace.

Little did I know that “Shit all over the bathroom” was a WEE bit of an understatement.

Now, a typical human being would respond to this as follows: Walk into the bathroom with some cleaning supplies in tow, and proceed to glance at the toilet. One would assume if there is poo in the bathroom, a good place to look would be the toilet. In fact, it should be the only place to look. I took this path of logical thinking, and it let me down. Big time.

Oh sure, it STARTED at the toilet. But that was just the beginning.

The human eye has something known as peripheral vision. And in my peripheral, I witnessed something that is beyond explanation. Well, I guess I can give it a shot: SOMEONE DONE ‘SPLODED POOPIES ON THE WALL!

Not just a dabble. It appeared as if an entire load was expended on the wall. And not just idly either, this was done with conviction! And what did I then notice on the way from the crap pot to the wall, but my own personal trail of tears. If you cried doo-doo that is.

I like to consider myself a logical person. Someone who can look at a situation and figure out what happened, how it happened, without much difficulty. This, however, had me flabbergasted. It was as if I had stumbled upon a bizarre murder scene, and I was the Detective.

The old phrase “No shit Sherlock” came to mind, only in this case there was plenty of shit.

After I stopped sobbing, I began to analyze this situation in my mind. Deconstructing and reconstructing the events that could have possibly unfolded in the men’s room. Now, I do know there are times when you have an “Emergency Situation” on your hands. We’ve all been there. But this was beyond just a case of the matter-splatters. This was the equivalent of a fecal nuclear holocaust. Devestation as far as the eye could see. As if someone had actually morphed into a giant ball of The Brown, and then proceeded to explode, like a Poo Super Nova.

The best way I could describe it… it’s as if I had stumbled upon the lair of that chocolate fudge monster from the old children’s boardgame Candy Land:

Gloppy? That sounds like a good word to describe it, yes...

How does this NOT look like a giant pile of human feces? And wearing a tie no less. As if he has an important meeting to attend. Poop with an agenda. A scary thought, if I do say so myself.

Perhaps this wasn’t an accident! This was the next thought to cross my mind. It hadn’t come to me before, because I didn’t think a human being was capable of such horrendous acts of bio-terrorism. What if someone actually INTENTIONALLY rubbed crap on the wall!
The sobbing began again at this point. I had to take a step outside, calm myself down. The terror was settling in so deep into my very being. Physically, I was a wreck. Sweating, vomiting, crying, shaking, I do believe I even broke out in hives. I’m actually quite positive I had an out-of-body experience for a moment. Looking down at me, looking down at a colon catastrophy.

I returned with reknewed vigor, hell bent on figuring out what happened. I began to imagine the situation as a crisis. As if the Colon and Brain had a conversation, much like a General would a troop during an epic battle.

Colon: Brain! Brain, it’s me Colon, got a second?

Brain: Yeah, what’s up Colon?

Colon: Well sir, we have the payload ready to drop, but we seem to have hit a bit of a snag.

Brain: What’s the situation?

Colon: It would seem that the load has become too much for us to bear, and we must drop now.

Brain: What? You can’t be serious, can’t we wait until we’re somewhere safe!

Colon: Sorry sir, we’ve discussed this with Anal Sphincter, and he see’s no way we can contain the blast.

Brain: But if we drop now, there may be civilian casualties!

Colon: I know, but we don’t have a choice!

Brain: My God!

Colon: Can you provide us with any assistant at all?!

Brain: The best I can do now is send the hands your way, at least we can remove the pants before the situation reaches critical overload.

Colon: Sir… we may not make it out of this alive. But I have to say, it has been an honor holding back waste for all these years under your service. Tell stomach I love her!

I can only imagine the panic that had overcome our victim. And it is fair to say this person was probably just as big a victim as myself. You don’t lose control of your butt that badly and enjoy it. This was probably not a thrilling situation for this poor fellow to be in. Stuck in a grocery store, tummy a little rumbly. And then the pressure. Oh the pressure. As if someone had turned out a shit-valve all up in this dude. And all he could do was run, frantically to the nearest place of Piss-ness. Tearing his pants from his waste, and struggling against the laws of physics themselves as his rectum slowly turned itself inside-out. I even considered searching for a corpse nearby. The energy expended to produce such a disaster alone would be enough to kill a man twice the size of myself. Not to mention the sudden drop in body mass!

This was what I told myself, so I didn’t go homicidal and hunt down the Pooprit (thats Poop and Culprit, if you didn’t catch that) and rip his throat clean out of his shit-shooting body. It was not his fault.

“But he didn’t clean up after himself, that’s pretty fucked up!”

Ah, my genteel co-worker has returned, to throw fuel on my rage-fire. The stress came back in waves. I actually went through the same five stages that you go through in death.

I began to apply the Kübler-Ross model to my situation.

Stage One – Denial: Nope. There is no way this is physically possible. No human body could possible have done this. This has to be a mistake. I’m tired, seeing things. I should go lie down, it’ll all be fine after a short nap. This happens to other people, in other places, not to me!

Stage Two – Anger: Alright, let’s say this is happening. Who the FUCK is responsible for this shit! Hah, “responsible for this shit!”. Wait! That’s not funny! I’m going to find this mother fucker and rip them to pieces. I’ll rip their large intestine out and strangle them with it!

Stage Three – Bargaining: I’ll give someone my entire paycheck to clean this up for me? Hmm? No. How about the next TWO paychecks? Fine. I’ll ask God. Dear God, I know I’ve said some pretty awful things in the past, but I promise I will be a devoted Christian if you were to impliment some Diving Intervention here. Please? I’ll forever dedicate myself to you!

Stage Four – Depression: I… I can’t believe this. Why me? Am I being punished? Haven’t I been a good grocery employee. I… I… just, I can’t do this. It’s as if my life no longer has meaning. I feel like I am failing myself. I can’t face this alone. Dear God, why! I just can’t!

Stage Five – Acceptance: You know something. Fuck it. This isn’t THAT bad. It’s not like there is a pile of dead babies in front of me. Even if it smells like a pile of dead babies, it isn’t! This is not the worst that could happen. It’s not like I have to pick it up with my hands, I have giant gloves. And a MOP! With a handle! I can approach this from a distance. HAH. This is nothing! I can do this!

And it was taken care of. I turned back to my opposition with new found faith. Not in God, but in Mr. Clean. In my back-up team of Scrubbing Bubbles. Surely they, and myself armed with a mop, can push back the enemy forces. Push them into the watery grave they deserve! I can remove this horror from the planet, and make the whole world a better place!

I began to mop the wall. A thought that, until now, had never occured to me. A mop, which should be for a floor, being used to clean up a mess that happens to be VERTICAL! It defies logic, but sometimes you have to think outside the toilet… er, box.

Needless to say, I walked out the other side of this all a better man inside. I survived, but the remnants of that day still ring in my memory. As if it was my brain that was covered in dookie.

But beware, faithful readers. For someday you too may be staring down the barrel of this smoking gun. You may wander, unsuspecting, into a restroom. Perhaps at a mall? Maybe in the airport. And when you least expect it, you will glance over. And there it will be. A butt-gravy Spin Art. Left behind by…

THE PHANTOM POOPER!

DUH DUH DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH!