In my fourth grade summer, I went to Boy Scout camp for a week. In the true nature of the thing, I did not bathe or use the latrine at any time during my stint there. While I was perfectly fine with pissing the woods, taking a shit there seemed to be somewhat of a logistical problem. Do I really have to bury it? What do I wipe with? These concerns compounded the issue that I have always enjoyed lengthy shitting sessions, and it's just plain uncomfortable to squat for that long. In any event, my eyes were dark, dark brown by pickup day.
To this day, I think all the marshmallows we ate from the store formed a viscous plug which helped me hold my poop in all week. I don't remember being in considerable discomfort until the drive home from the campgrounds. The pain served a dual purpose, though, since it helped block out my mother's chastising me for not changing my clothes for seven straight days. I had some major car sickness boiling up, but little did anyone know the spew would not be coming
from my mouth.
After an hour or so of agony, I made it home and catapulted myself into the bathroom. I imagine this was a forty-five minute ordeal, but one loses track of time...
I had so much shit compacted in my colon (and surely up into my
digestive tract as an overflow pipe) that I'm pretty sure Stephen Hawking would have classified it as a singularity. This shit was like pooping a flag pole: uncomfortably long and too rigid to coil. If I hadn't shifted side to side to break it up, I would be been raised off the seat. The stench, as you might imagine, was of rancid campfire and fermented death. Bears don't smell this bad - and they really stink! I'm sure my nostrils were singed and my eyebrows burned off.
After shit surgery with a plunger, a dozen courtesy flushes, and a full roll of TP I was ready to pass out, but I was done. The putrid smell remained in full force the rest of the day, and no one in my
family was willing to go into the bathroom for a week.
To this day, my sister still claims the stench killed her canary, which dropped dead in its cage outside the bathroom door that afternoon during the deed. Scouts was over for me after that year. I'm pretty sure the BSA disagrees with me, but I consider that afternoon ranking up to Eagle.
