In the intense scurry most high schoolers face in preparing for college, I applied this year to attend the American Legion Auxiliary's highly praised Girls State Government program over the summer. Luckily for me, I was selected as one of three hundred girls from the fine state of Florida to attend the nine-day program at Florida State University. Unfortunately for me, I was not looking forward to this experience due to three factors: 1) I have no interest in government; I want to major in computer science. 2) I was quite exhausted from a year of AP courses and exams. 3) I'm a very picky eater, and my beloved health foods don't exist in the FSU dining hall.
Number 3 is what instigates this tale.
During my stint in the Girls State program, all of the delegates (that's what they called us) ate in the same dining hall night after night. To everyone else, the food selection was great. To a calorie-counting non-beef-or-pork-eating lipophobe such as myself, there weren't many choices: fruit, salad, and cereal. Fish if I was lucky. Nonetheless, I made out fine for the first six days of the trip. For three of the last four days, all of the delegates were brought to the state capitol to perform mock government activities -- a pretty big honor for us. We worked alongside senators and representatives and department executives in their very chairs. At times, were given almost complete free reign of the capitol building. Sometimes we had to be at meetings in certain areas of the building at exact times in the day -- to hear a speaker, pass bills, work in our respective branches, etc. This schedule did not prove kind to a finicky digestive system.
As I mentioned previously, I had been on a bare diet of fruits and veggies all week, with little protein. During our second day at the capitol, my group of delegates was honored with a guest speaker in one of the executive meeting rooms. During the presentation, I began to feel an odd rumbling sensation within my gut. I'd had an upset stomach with a side of the squirts before, but this felt really vivid and persistent. I could hear and feel some rancid beast forming inside me, and now was NOT the time to deal with it.
To avoid the risk of being rude, I sat through the entire speech as my innards churned away. As soon as I was able to leave the room, I walked over to the bathroom, expecting a few farts and a piss, planning on holding in the beast until we got back to the FSU campus dorms.
This may sound like a silly plan; however, pooping in a public bathroom is pretty much a silently forbidden practice among seventeen-year-old girls such as myself. Therefore, I opted to release my doo-doos in the privacy of the dorm bathrooms later that day.
My colon had other ideas. As soon as I sat on the porcelain god, I began the expected tinkle, but was surprised to find that number two was coming about as well. Thankfully for me, it was soft yet firm enough so that it was not heard over the sound of the tinkling, as there were other girls in the bathroom at the time. I cleaned up and was a bit relieved, thinking I had just gotten rid of my stomach problem, and that I would be fine from then on.
I was wrong. Upon returning to the meeting room, my stomach began to whine and grumble again. At this point I began to feel actual cramping pain -- pain that tormented me for the rest of the day. A few more times before we left the capitol, I experienced some potentially embarrassing diarrhea-monsters that I masked by flushing or conducted in empty restrooms within the capitol building.
These were new to me: when they were about to hit, you knew it. You could tell it was coming if you were keeled over by a massive stomach cramp and could barely walk to the closest available restroom. And when you got up after what felt like shitting your insides out, you still felt exactly as you had before and weren't sure if you could go back to working or needed to hang around the bowl for a few more minutes.
Needless to say, I felt pretty bad about violating the restrooms of the state capitol buildings multiple times that day.
Salvation seemed near as we boarded the bus to head back to the dorms. I was trying to figure out what could have summoned such ugly occurrences: sickness? Change in diet? Food poisoning? I dared not stuff much down the gullet at dinner -- my stomach was still pouting.
Once we got back to the dorms, it was time to hit the showers. The dorms had community bathrooms: each hall had a restroom with three shower stalls, three toilet stalls, and a sink. I took advantage of the fact that everyone was showering and allowed the water noise to mask my angry little sharts.
Once again, filling the bowl did nothing to ease the churning cramps -- it felt as though someone was taking a cheese grater to my intestines. I popped some Advil tablets later on and went to sleep.
At about 2:00 AM, I was rudely awakened by the most intense stomach cramps I've ever experienced in my life. I stumbled down the ladder of my bunk bed and off to the bathroom, where I was greeted by no brown and green present. I stumbled back into bed and repeated this about three more times that night; that is, when I wasn't writhing about in bed, sweating bullets and nearly in tears.
The next day at the capitol proved to be worse. The stomach cramps persisted and only calmed if I could sit still for about ten minutes. We spent most of the day touring, however, and between just about every activity I had the task of finding an empty or nearly-empty restroom, wrenching out a semi-liquid shit-monster, and coming up with an excuse for excusing myself. Once again, in the mindset of a seventeen-year-old girl, POOPING IS NOT ALLOWED.
At some points in the day, I got away from my friends long enough to execute my shameful deeds without suspicion from others. When traveling from one room to another area, I'd have to violate the restrooms on one floor, take an elevator toward my destination, stop at the next floor, and repeat. I got so worn out from shitting myself dry that I ended up passing out on a bench in the capitol.
This torment carried on until a few days after I got home, making it nearly impossible to eat, walk long distances, or even move without considering all the potential consequences. Needless to say, it was traumatizing.