This rather tragic episode in my life took place while I was on a youth group camp, at the impressionable age of 11.
It was the first camp of that kind I had been on, and thus the routine activities that youngsters are herded into on such camps seemed rather exciting. The culmination of these activities was to be what they called a "mess-up," where the camp leaders would stand on a wooden platform in one of the large expanses of grass, and would willingly have various food items, mostly eggs and flour, also some waterbombs, thrown at them.
At this particular camp, I had fallen in with a group of older boys, who had been reasonably friendly to me, although they would sometimes pull my leg and make me look like an idiot in front of the girls.
Anyway, it was the night before the "mess-up," and we were preparing the projectiles we would soon be using on the camp leaders. While doing so, one of my new friends drew me aside and told me that the custom was to make what he termed "poop rockets." These consisted of a turd wrapped very lightly in toilet paper, to be thrown at some unfortunate person.
I believed his story, as I had no reason to do otherwise, and, as I am what I like to call a "nocturnal pooper" (that is, someone who poops in the evening, rather than at morn), set about making some so-called poop rockets that evening.
The big day dawned, and we assembled on the grassy area and began letting the camp leaders have it. This event went without a hitch, until I started in with my packages of poop.
It was a complete success and an unmitigated disaster. The first one I fired off hit one of the leaders in the shoe. It exploded, and set small particles of feces flying at my fellow campers below. I snickered and flung another one. A brief aside now -- I am, admittedly, completely uncoordinated, and have never been able to achieve even a passable level of skill in any sort of physical activity. This is probably why the direct hit, when it came, shocked me to the core.
This next one I threw, I should mention, was noticeably soggier than the other, having been produced later on during my pooping, when the texture is always significantly less firm. It hit one of the camp leaders square in the face and exploded all over him, and, having always been a somewhat malicious youth, I doubled over laughing.
When I recovered, I looked around to see the once-thronging crowd of children had frozen, and that the leader whom I had hit staring at me, the part of his face that wasn't covered in feces turning as red as a beetroot.
I sprinted off, and he and two other leaders jumped down from the platform and started in pursuit. Eventually I tired and they caught up to me.
The camp leader whom I had hit was a particularly vicious one (his name was Jarrod Evans. I don't know any more details about him, but if anyone reading this knows or someday meets the bastard, punch him in the face for me), and I knew he would not let me off lightly. His two cronies grabbed me and pushed me to the ground, while Jared walked menacingly around me, cursing me fluently and using words that an 11-year-old's ears should not be made to hear.
When he had finished calling me names, Jarrod presented me with two options. The first was that he would tell my parents about what I had done. The second option was that I lie there, with his mates pinning me down, while he squatted and took a shit on top of me.
Well, I knew that if my parents ever learned of my throwing shit at a camp leader's face, the punishments would be pretty severe, so I conceded defeat, and agreed to letting him shit on me.
What I hadn't taken into account was beer. The camp leaders had been having a booze-up the night before, as I learned later, to celebrate the last night of having to deal with us brats. Anyway, you can imagine the horror that followed, which was only slightly lessened by his mates also getting a fair bit on them.
I went home with a full set of clothes soaked in shit, which I was never able to get the smell out of, and eventually ended up throwing out.
This is a verifiable, true story, and one which I have related to no less that two school counsellors and also to my psychiatrist. The awful memory of it has remained with me all these years, and I want you to know that relating it to all you has considerably lessened the emotional burden I still have to bear.
-- by fecaltreacle