A few years ago I was working over the summer at a Boy Scout Camp. Though all camps are notorious for having terrible food, I had never worked at one where the food made me not quite the happiest stockbroker on Wall Street.
The cheese wasn't even melted on what shall be know henceforth as The Chalupa From Hell -- that should have been a warning sign. The cramps came on, followed by the nausea. My vision was fading. I stumbled slowly towards the staff latrine. I opened the door almost ready in my pained stagger for the onslaught of sight and smell that didn't hit me.
Wait, wait. Double take. Rewind.
"Didn't hit me." Yes, you read right, folks. I had walked into a latrine that had just had the entire contents of its two-thousand-gallon crap tank removed by some reputable septic service (a.k.a. the county). But I didn't have time to marvel at the novelty. I hastily fumbled for my scout shorts made of sheets of commercial-grade sandpaper. I yanked for about two seconds, roughing up my legs and realizing two things:
- I was wearing my required (damned incompetent people -- more on this later) scout belt, and it had jammed closed (it was one of those buckles with the bar that you move to hold it in place).
- Though this latrine was clean, the latch on the plywood door was broken.
Well, I couldn't worry about #2 right now (no pun intended); I quickly pulled out my trusty Leatherman, cut the belt in half, ripped down my pants, sat down -- and realized the door was swinging open.
Now, this latrine was in the line of sight of the dining hall -- and everyone was just coming out of dinner, four hours after that ill-fated lunch of bad chalupas. Now I am by no means a Shameful Shitter -- I'll take a dump wherever, whenever -- but I couldn't have seven hundred scouts looking at me, their favorite camp counselor, taking a dump of epic proportions.
(One kid wrote this on his evaluation form:
What did you like about camp: Nothing. It was terrible.
Comments: {KeepOnCrappin} is the best counselor ever and should be paid $1,000,000.)
The door on this latrine was probably only two feet away. But to me sitting on the pot, about to unleash the hounds from their excruciatingly painful pen, it was a mile. No, two miles. But I had to do what had to be done. I stretched and stretched just as my loaf (or rather, what I thought would be a loaf) began its expulsion.
I couldn't reach the door.
So what did I do? I stood up and shut it.
The latch clicking into place must have tripped the detonation sequence. It came out, me two feet away from the crapping hole.
If you have ever watched Saving Private Ryan, you remember the noise and explosions during the invasion of Normandy scene. Now take all that noise -- and the feeling of the 50,000 shells exploding -- and concentrate it in one place: my asshole.
For lack of a better phrase: it explodicated.
The pain of those artillery shells exploding drove me to the wall. I clung to the toilet paper holder for dear life. Then my eardrums blew up as all that noise came and went. I know it was loud because the lake, which is three miles wide and has mountains around it, reflected the sound for three minutes. The shells must have been incendiary, because my ass was literally on fire. I literally could have lit a fire with my ass, it was so hot. (Which, as it turns out, I did -- literally and figuratively.)
I couldn't stand to look at the destruction I knew I had applied to the poor latrine. I wiped, using the entire roll of toilet paper. It was not enough. (Damned incompetent TP refillers, only putting in one roll…)
Remember how I said that my scout shorts were made of sandpaper? This is how I learned this fact: I put the shorts back on inside out to save embarrassment -- though my Jockeys were not saved -- and went to my tent.
After all that, you'd think I'd get a break. But no, I was destined for more misfortune. While destroying the evidence, one of my tent buddies walked in, inquiring first as to what the brown substance on my pants was, and then what the terrible stench was (I was having SBD's by then). I told him it was mud. Unfortunately my friend just had to be the scientist of the camp -- he wanted to know where this mud could be found, since we had been in a drought for two weeks. I finally just loosed a particularly nasty fart and he left.
Finally. My ordeal would be over.
But no, there was still more fun to befall me.
The next day as I was getting ready for breakfast, the camp heard a very loud scream: "OH MY GOD!! A CRAP BOMB WENT OFF IN THE STAFF LATRINE!!!"
Then the camp director came running out. I first snickered to myself, but then I grew stonefaced as I realized that it was my work that had obliterated the newly-cleaned latrine.
Being curious as I am, I went to see my destruction. I opened the door and was cut down by the smell of crap stewing for a day in hundred-degree heat. I got up and held my breath, and then went in to see.
Holy shit. (Pardon the pun.)
There was crap everywhere. It was on the walls, the seat, the toilet paper holder, the floor, and anywhere else one could possibly see, including the roof. The seat lid would not close due to the amount of crap on the seat.
I left.
Because no one would own up to who did it, we were each docked five dollars from our pay to cover the costs of the cleaning. I was not in the camp during the interrogation because I was at the camp across the lake at the time, asking if they had heard the sound of my power dump.
Damned incompetent people, can't even clean it up themselves.