At this time in my life, my days off were weekdays and my dog was an eight-month-old husky in need of running off excess energy. My favorite spot to avoid running alongside a curvy highway with no shoulder and the risk of poison oak was an abandoned elementary school down the road from my house. This place was great for my dog's early training -- usually there wasn't a soul around during the late morning, except the maintenance guy. I would see his yellow van at the entrance and sometimes see him from a distance (and occasionally pass by him napping in his van). He kept the play structures, the ball courts, and the sports fields on either side of campus very nice for the kiddy teams that practiced there in the late afternoons; but other parts of the school were not kept up. Evidence of bored mountain teens attested to that. The whole place was built like a labyrinth, with its many layers laid out in a nice workout of steps up and down the side of a steep hill. Its buildings jutted at odd angles, interspersed with lawn-lined pathways and classroom porch plant projects gone awry.

It began as any other day, except for the fact I would be meeting my oldest and dearest friend for lunch afterwards. I was determined to get my dog good and tired so she could sleep in the car while I caught up with my buddy. We had lived together for over twelve years, and these days it was hard enough to nail down time to see each other, let alone have a baby dog's needs ruin my one hour to myself. So my little Wolfie and I set off at a rigorous pace.

About a half hour in, I felt the first signal. "EEEP!"

In technical terms, "EEEP!" is the whimper your digestive sensors in your intestinal muscle nerves make, firing a direct connection to specialized synapses of the brain that interpret said message as, "Emergency Elimination: Eruption Pending."

Being all too familiar with this as the squirming precursor to the much dreaded "OOOPS!" (Overtaxed O-ring Override: Pants Shatten!), I hastened my pace. I was determined to keep my lunch date. That first EEEP means that you either find a toilet or a secluded place, or face a full-on dis-ass-trous OOOPS. I quickly scanned my mental map of the place. I remembered lots of angles and coves, but all were immediately obvious by anyone rounding any number of corners. Someone could come upon you all of a sudden and instantly be only feet away, staring you in the eyes, or elsewhere.

So I opted for a copse of bushes up all the stairs on an otherwise bare grass hill behind the property. I knew I could see the whole campus from that blind, but no one could see me. I'd pissed up there enough times to know. Perfect!

We headed back to the car for napkins. My baby girl was very happy to learn this wasn't actually the end of our walk when I proceeded away from the highway and back up the incline. I surveyed the parking lot. No other civilian cars today, but that damned maintenance van was at the entrance, empty, and it was anybody's guess as to where the man might be. I'd had days where we never ran into each other, but on other days one of us would come around a building and shock the bejeezus out of one the other. I really didn't want to fool with my odds at the moment!

Stairs are evil when clenching for dear life -- downright painful, and every step is a "will-it-won't-it" shituation. It's times like this when you consider Karma as a viable explanation for the misfortune that has befallen you. I began to wonder about the bad things I'd done in my life to warrant such a punishment. The one day I actually had plans to be social afterwards? C'mon!

I was full of the intention (among other things) of getting as far away from civilization as possible, but I swear at a certain point, in between the first several flights of stairs and the basketball court in the middle, I flashed on Jeff Daniels' performance in Dumb & Dumber as a borborygmus gurgle, an audible grumble, and then a pressurized Ka-blam! hit me with an urgent force, a mudslide pounding down at the back door. There was no way I was going to make it up that hill.

Ah, yes, the best and most courteous plan conceived of bypassing a public deposit and precluding an "OOOPS!" was imminently necessary. It was time to reexamine the mental map. Through the chilling sweat and hot goose-bumps, I thought of the most appropriate place, smack dab in the middle of the school. The one place with the most cover. The only hide-away that had all of two corners to pop around in order to shatter my precarious privacy. And I hadn't seen the maintenance guy close by there today...

The safe haven in question was this shed in front of a classroom door alcove that had a old, overrun gardening project behind it. The stepping-stones were barely visible, so I knew the maintenance guy didn't go back there and trim it.

And speaking of overrun, I can't believe my pucker (and pants) remained pristine throughout that journey.

With gasping breath and scratchy paper napkins crushed in damp fists, I set my young dog on guard duty. "Tell me if you see people," I instructed, knowing full well her first instinct would be to bark at the unknown, however close or far off. In theory, I could pinch at the first hark of danger and get my pants back up, right?

And with that, I dropped trou (well, more like I ripped them down like scalding acid in the form of stretchy fabric) to escape an impending OOOPS.

There is nothing sweeter than the utter relief that THAT is! I just let it go.

So it came to pass, and pass it did: a molten lava was released. A homogeneous slurry of thin gut gravy gushed forth and showed no signs of stopping. After each propulsed onslaught that smoothly spread in scorching circles between my feet, I took a small shuffling step forward so I could successfully keep the poured puddles from over-seeping the space in between my walking boots.

I was blessed by the Gas Gods that day -- because, friends, I had none, absolutely no spray paint of which to speak. My clothes were none the worse for wear after this impooptu crap -- all the better for my stealthy re-introduction into civilized company at my luncheon afterwards. I distinctly remember being grateful for that: a clean get-away after a nasty dump.

And when the entire evacuation was complete, I wiped my ass with those damn sandpaper napkins and flung them off into shrubs unknown, away from the scene of the crime (nobody needs to see and know, do they? It could still be the work of a dog, right? Albeit a very, very big dog...)

"By Gawd!" And I made this exclamation in Utah Phillips' gravelly voice, his incredulous tones ringing between my ears like in his Moose Turd Pie classic. By the sheer volume of this lake (as I am fairly small and don't consume all that much food), I could only assume I was experiencing the fecal phenomenon of Shitting Things I Hadn't Even Eaten Yet. It's actually quite a common occurrence when it comes to diarrhea, but you haven't truly appreciated it until you've measured the sight without the obscuring effects of toilet water (or without depositing it smaller doses during repeated trips to the bowl).

But what really struck me, and what was particularly memorable about this EEEP al fresco, was that my sickening sludge was nestled in amongst the clean, vibrant green leaves of an herb garden grown free. And when I realized it was all wild mint that framed my newly created bog of eternal stench, I was moved. It was damn near poetic.

I'm not one for admiring my work (except for an obligatory once-over for health reasons), but I actually lingered a little over what had happened. As I pondered my slightly steaming and glinting pool in the weak sunlight of winter, with the noxious fumes of stink molecules and water vapor wafting up to dissipate into the atmosphere, the irony tickled me so much that I recall it with quiet amusement to this day. I had inadvertently created an image that could conjure many profound statements: the oxymoronic juxtaposition of the fresh and the fetid... the dichotomy between the two most important ends of an animal... the purest one orifice aspires to against the most prurient the other can create... verdant versus vile... fecal versus fecund... the naturalness of the circle of life...

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When we returned to the school for our next walk after a couple days of rain, I chanced a peek. How could I not? But the evidence of my anal artistry was gone. My own personal brand of filthy fertilizer was now seeping into the mint's roots, helping nourish and invigorate the next generation of plants. Contemplating this near craptasrophy from beginning to end, I knew this particular contribution of mine to the cycle of life was complete.