A couple of weeks before I got married, my fiancé and I went to my parents' house on a Saturday morning. My fiancé was going somewhere with her mother (I don't remember where), and my mother was going to take our daughter to the swimming pool. This left me with my dad, who was in the process of building a deck. Since I enjoy building things, I offered to help him for the day.
My fiancé had taken our car to go meet her mother; and with her went the keys to the house. But I didn't think about that when I told my father, "I'll just run home and get my tools." I hopped in my dad's car and sped off home. Upon arrival, I suddenly realized that I had no keys to unlock the door.
"No problem," I thought. "I can pry up a window and get in." My dad's car is a BMW, and BMWs come with a tool kit in the trunk. I got out the screwdriver and set to work trying to pry open the window in the front room. But the lock wouldn't budge.
So there I was, stuck outside of my house on a sunny morning in early June. It was starting to get hot, and I was beginning to get frustrated. Then, all of a sudden, I had to shit.
This happens to me sometimes. A shit will just come on from nowhere. Usually I am on the couch, or at my desk, or somewhere else from where I can easily reach a bathroom. This happening when I am locked out of my house was really bad timing. I suppose I might have driven to the gas station about a mile away, but the cramping and rumbling were pretty severe, which made walking almost impossible -- let alone driving. What was I to do? I couldn't get in the house; and I couldn't possibly drive and risk laying one on the soft leather seat of my dad's car.
Eureka! I had an empty five-gallon bucket in the carport.
"Wait," I thought. You see, the carport faces the street. Directly across the street live a couple with whom I went to high school, and the female half is quite nice to look at. I really didn't want to be squatting over a bucket if they decided to look out their front door.
So there I was. Caught between a rock and a hard place (or, a good shit). "Maybe the back door is unlocked," I thought. So I shuffled around the house.
Do you remember that scene in Up in Smoke where Cheech Marin has to shit? He's walking around the factory where they are covering the van with pot, his cheeks clenched, grabbing his ass, saying, "Oh, I hope that was a fart!" That's how I was moving. Around the house I went, to the back door, grabbed the knob and... LOCKED!
Dammit! Was I going to have to break the window? Fuck it. The bucket was looking better and better. That's it. The bucket it is.
So I moved all the way to the back of the carport, behind my car (if only I had driven it that morning, I wouldn't have this problem) so the hot neighbor chick couldn't see me, and down with the pants. In position, about to release the hounds, I realize that I might want to wipe my ass after this. Stop the presses! Pull up the pants. Think. Okay, I had some McDonald's napkins in my car. I grabbed them and went back to my makeshift pot. I had everything I needed, so I sat.
This was one of those shits that feels better than anything you've ever done. On my own toilet, I would have let out a big moan. Since I was shitting in a bucket in the carport, I resisted the urge. The shitting over, I wiped and stood up. I found the lid to the bucket and snapped it on. But I still couldn't get in the house, and now I had a bucket of shit to get rid of. Well, back to the windows.
I gave up on the front window and moved on to the bedroom. That lock was broken, it turns out, and the window went right up. I climbed in and proceeded to get my house keys. I grabbed my tools and put them in the car.
But what to do with the bucket full of shit? This was Saturday, and trash day was Friday. There was no way I was going to let that shit sit out there for six days in June. I had to take it somewhere.
It just so happens that there is a convenience center (a place for those who don't want to pay for trash service to take their trash) just a few miles from my house. I loaded up the bucket, with my load in it, and drove to the convenience center. I pulled into the dump and threw away my dump.
And that ended my adventure. I went back to my parents' house, and helped my dad with the deck. We had a pretty good time, and we finished it a lot faster than he would have on his own.
I learned something that day, though. I never leave the house without knowing how I can get in if my wife takes the car somewhere; and I learned that it's a really good idea to keep some napkins in the car, and an empty bucket with a lid in the carport.
-- Jeff Atkins