Surprise Attack at Mile High

One of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott, said that to write well, you have to “write as if your parents are dead.” Fortunately, mine are still alive. But, in order to write things like what I’ve posted below, I have to pretend that they’re not. I wrote this for another purpose, and hesitated to post it here for reasons that will become obvious. But since it was already complete and since some of the people who have read it seemed to enjoy it, and because I feel that posting it will be oddly cathartic, even liberating, I post it here. Although I, like Anne Lamott, worry that “Jesus drinks himself to sleep when He hears me talk this way.” If you’re offended by potty talk and the word shit or you’re one of those people who constantly says things like overshare or TMI (too much information) you should stop reading now.

Unfortunately, all that follows is true. It happened about a month ago.

“Arriving at Invesco Field on right,” drones the monotone female voice from my Garmin. Scottie maneuvers our black Kia Optima that we rented around the periphery of the parking lot to the stadium and we talk about his love of the Broncos when he was younger and the lameness of the name Invesco Field at Mile High. We’re in Denver to interview for residency positions in the Psychiatry program at the University of Colorado, Denver. But the interviews were yesterday, so we’re hitting a few tourist sites just enjoying our last day in the city. We pull into the lot south of the stadium. I’m looking up at the enormous white bronco rearing on its hind legs above the south end zone. As we drive closer, I lean to my left to execute a classic leg-lift. This is a move I’ve done thousands of times. I can do it in my sleep. In fact, sometimes I do. You lean a little to one side, lift the opposite side hip/upper thigh to release a fart. It’s a move with a dual purpose. One is to partially spare your car’s interior from the furious blast of methane from your butt. The other is to allow more of the stench to reach whoever is in the vicinity so they can partake of your offering as well. It’s a rental car so I’m not too concerned about searing the seat with rank farts. I am, however, pretty interested in fogging up the car and forcing Scottie to roll down his window—a submission that is satisfying and funny.

Leaning left, release…oh noooooo…was that…wet? I freeze. Maybe it’s one of those farts that just feels wet initially. Sometimes if you move a little you realize that your nervous system is merely playing a cruel joke on you, like the amputee who continues to sense pain in a limb that’s no longer there. I wiggle. Pleeeeease be phantom moisture. This. Is. Not. Happening. Lord, you’ve got to be kidding me.

I’ve just shit my pants.

We pass a Port-A-Potty. “Scottie, stop. I think I need to poo.” I get out of the car and do that wide-leg waddle—the one that you do when you’re nursing a bad case of swish-ass—over to the john. Pad-locked. Shit. “Dude, I think I just shit my pants.” Scottie says nothing but erupts into uncontrollable laughter. He looks like he’s been poisoned and is in the throes death—violently rocking back and forth, slapping the steering wheel. Laugh. Gasp for air. Laugh so more. “Glad you’re enjoying this. Ass!” He doesn’t hear me. He’s whooping, wailing, and at this point, crying tears of joy. For the two of us, this is simultaneously the highlight and low-light of the trip, depending on the status of the underwear you happen to be wearing.

This is exactly the fourth time that I’ve pooed my pants as an adult. The first, and probably most alarming, was when I was 18. I pooed the bed. Yes, pooed the bed. Asleep. I’m a Freshman in college. My friends and I have had our own place for a few months and I’m really settling in to my own. I’ve got my own comfortable room. I’ve recently purchased a new pack of boxers—all white, and I’m wearing a pair. This makes the poop really pop, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I finish up some homework. Watch a little TV while I polish off a box of Honeycomb before calling it a night. A pretty standard night. I feel fine and I go to sleep easily. Around 2 AM, I awake. I’m groggy, so it takes a few seconds for me to realize that I’m wet…and warm. What the hell? My first thought is of my roommates. I assume they’ve played a prank. Maybe they had my hand in a bowl of warm water trying to get me to pee the bed, and the water has spilled. But my hand is dry. I lean up and flip on the light and look down at my boxers—code brown. WTF? How does that happen? Pee the bed? Maybe. But poo? That’s the stuff of case reports. Stuff you hear about serial killers that are profiled on A&E. He frequently killed animals, set fire to churches, and unknowingly defecated in his sleep. Fortunately, it proved to be an isolated incident, though still an engima. I wouldn’t shit my pants again for another 18 months, and next time, I’d be awake.

This time, I’m a missionary high in the Andes mountains. Working in a city called Juliaca. Because it’s a pretty miserable place to live, I’ve dubbed it Juli-caca—foreshadowing if I’ve ever heard it. It’s late morning and my companion and I have just wrapped up a discussion with someone and we’re heading back to our apartment on foot. We’ve got about two miles to walk. We’re cutting through a field that we often use as a shortcut when I feel the uneasy gurgling in my belly that is an all-too-familiar harbinger of trouble. I almost take my companion up on a standing offer to poo in that field for the tidy sum of 10 Soles—about $3.50 USD. I need to go. I always carry TP in my backpack for occasions such as this. And, I’m going to get paid for it. But after a short deliberation, I opt for decency and privacy and convince myself that I can make it back to our apartment in time. I almost do.

I’ve been saddling my sphincter with an impossible task for the past 20 minutes. 50 yards from our apartment, that little ring of muscle succumbs to fatigue and will contract no more. And I’ve pooped my pants for the 2nd time as an adult.

One of the nicest things about Juliaca is that running water is only available from about 6 AM to 11 AM. It’s about quarter to noon. No shower for me today. Just cleaning up with some one-ply TP and a bucket of ice cold water that we fill each morning so we can flush the toilet after 11 AM. Awesome experience. One that I naively assume will go down as the worst pants-pooping experience of my life.

Shat pants #3 is on Christmas Day 2001. I’m still a missionary and I’m in my apartment on the phone with my family. This one is pretty standard. I think it’s a fart. It’s not. I cut the phone call a little short, go take off the soiled underpants, shower, put on some clean ones, move on, no biggie.

Back to Denver and shit-pants #4. Fortunately, it’s the last day of our trip. We’ve already checked out of our hotel so we have our luggage with us. “Pop the trunk!” I dig through my bag, find some underwear, a pair of shorts, and my shaving kit. I also grab an old folder to put on my seat. I’ve definitely touched cotton at this point. But will the cotton hold? Is the osmotic gradient of my drawers such that the mess will still be contained? Questions I can’t answer at this point. I throw the folder on the seat and climb back into the car. Scottie is still struggling to breathe. I’m unwilling to sit down completely so I assume that position you do when you’re riding shotgun in someone’s car while you’ve got on a wet swimming suit. You lock your knees and push your feet against the sloped part of the car’s floor with your butt a few inches off the seat and your back tight against the back rest, wedged. I’m tall enough that this requires me to also crane my neck with my ear pushing against the roof. Comfy.

The parking lot has several other outhouses for the Bronco faithful that come early to tailgate before games. “Let’s try those ones.” Scottie, still unable to speak, puts the car in drive and we troll around the parking lot looking for an unlocked can. No luck. They’re all locked. Dammit. We park for a second. Assess our options. The team store at the stadium is open. There are dozens of kids running from the ticket office—presumably a field trip. “You could try the team store. It says it’s open.” “Yeah, but what if I have a visible poop stain? And what am I going to do, walk in there with shorts and underwear, then walk back out with my pants?” Nope. Not doing it here. “We gotta go somewhere else.”

We spot a Denny’s nearby and start towards it. En route, we pass another parking lot that has two Port-A-Potties and we happen to see a guy go into one. Yes! They’re open. “Drive up there. Those ones are open.” We pull up right next to the two shitters. I get out. Scottie confirms that I do, indeed, have a visible shit stain on my pants and as soon as he sees it I’m not sure if he’s laughing, or having a seizure. Frankly, I don’t care at this point. Humiliated, I waddle into the Port-A-Potty and get down to business. This is no small accident, it’s a GD mudslide. It’s immediately apparent that the underwear can not be salvaged. I make an executive decision and throw them in with the pee and poo and TP, expecting them to sink. They don’t. As I’m using Purel and one-ply TP (which guarantees an abundance of chode snow) to clean my taint, I hear a diesel engine pull up right beside the door. There is no lock on the damn thing, so I’m standing there naked from the waist down, one foot on the floor, the other on the seat of the toilet holding the door shut with both hands, certain this guy is going to try to open the door. I hear Scottie. “My friend is in there. He’s not feeling well.” I relax a little and go back to the unsavory job at hand. A few moments later I hear some laughing—Scottie and the voice that clearly belongs to whoever is in the truck.

I finally finish up. I’m feeling much better. I’m down a pair of underwear, a bottle of Purel, and my dignity, but otherwise feeling fine. I open the door and confirm my fear that this is the guy that pumps the shitters when they’re full. I see the tank in the bed of his truck and the hose he’s planning to use to pump the toilet. My eyes get big, my lips purse, nostrils flare a bit. No way is that hose big enough to handle my underwear. Shit! We gotta get out of here.

The guy’s tiny, maybe 5’2” 130 lbs. If I had to guess, he’s originally from Southeast Asia. His English sucks. When he sees my shaving kit and my pants rolled up in my hand, he too, loses it. Up until then, he thought I was just sick. When he sees my pants and supplies, he realizes I’ve shit my pants and he loves it. That sets off Scottie again and the two of them are laughing it up. It’s a real low point when one of your best friends and a tiny stranger who speaks no English and pumps the shitter for a living are having a good laugh at your expense.

I hop in the car as Scottie is snapping photos with his cell phone and fanning the flames of laughter with the shitter-pumper. “Dude, we gotta go.” Uproarious laughter. Just as one of them gets it under control, the other loses it and sets off another round of guffaws. F-you both. “Scottie, we gotta go!” It’s only a matter of minutes before that little hose gets clogged with my undies and as much fun as it would be to laugh at this little guy trying to get my shitty underwear out of his clogged hose, I don’t want to be around when it happens. Scottie finally shuts his door. I tell him that I tossed my underwear in there, he gets it, and we speed away.

Fortunately, I managed to make it back to SLC without pooping my pants again, although not without another solid 15 minutes of hard time in the restroom at the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art. Certainly an experience I won’t soon forget. Scottie can still hardly speak about it without having a complete come-apart. Would that I can remember the surprise attack at Mile High as the final time I shit my pants.