This story happened back when I was a sophomore in college. I was living in a dorm, and my roommate, a twice-a-day pooper (once in the morning and once at night before he showers), was in the bathroom. He always took thirty minutes to poop and another thirty minutes to shower, so he was in the bathroom a total of an hour at night.

One night, while he was in the bathroom, my stomach started churning. Must have been something from the cafeteria. I figured I'd try to wait it out until he was done using the bathroom, but the longer I waited the worse my stomach felt. I knew I wasn't going to be able to hold it in for an hour. But what could I do?

The only available public bathroom was downstairs and I was on the third floor -- I didn't think I could make it down there. I contemplated asking my next door neighbor, but I felt it too rude to use his toilet for this situation.

By now, I was squeezing my cheeks as hard as I could to hold things back. I paced the room to help my thinking when I saw a plastic grocery sack on the floor. "I could poop in that," I thought. I grabbed it and contemplated the idea for a while, but thought, "what if it gets messy and goes all over the floor? That would be a mess to clean up." I entertained the thought of emptying one of my dresser drawers and pooping in that, or perhaps pooping in the sink... but we've got a tiny little sink and it would have been all clogged up if I did that.

Then I thought I could poop in the laundry room because it has one of those big trashcans inside. I figured this would be a good idea, so I waddled over there and got up on the washing machine ready to poop into the trashcan below -- but then I thought how embarrassing it would be for someone to walk in and see me pooping into a trashcan. I could never live with that.

So reluctantly, I went back to my room. I was building up quite a load inside now, and it was not going to wait for my roommate to get out. Finally, I knew the only choice I really had was to try and make it to the downstairs bathroom. It was going to be dangerous, especially since the diarrhea was about to come out any second. There's nothing worse than letting it rip in the middle of the stairwell, with people coming up. But I decided to take the chance. Either I could poop in the plastic sack or do it in the bathroom, so I chose the latter.

I ran down as fast as best as I could with my butt cheeks still tightly squeezed together. Somehow, I managed to reach the bathroom in time. Thank God there was no one in the stall since there is only one -- I don't know what I would have done if someone was in there.

Quickly I dropped my pants, but before my behind even reached the seat, everything just exploded out. I can't even begin to describe the damage that was done to the bathroom stall. The horrors. But if you refer to this link, http://ratemypoo.com/?poo=24272 (Editor's note: Eww. I wouldn't click that if I were you.) and picture it 10 times worse, that's what it pretty much looked like. There was tremendous splash damage, not only to my butt but also to the walls and toilet.

After I was done taking care of business, careful not to sit on the seat, I surveyed the scene and knew there was no way I could clean this mess up -- but being the nice guy that I am, I tried wiping the toilet seat the best I could. Didn't do much good, though. I pity the person who had to come in there and clean it up. And I never told my roommate about the trouble and pain I had to go through because he took too long in the bathroom.

-- Mr. Wu