Mark The Ginger Boy

Editor's Note: This originally came to me as an 1800-"word" count, rambling, single block of troglodytic text-speak that took up two solid pages of a Microsoft Word document at a size eleven font. Something about my memories of grade school made me edit this for the front page. I have not yet figured out if that something was masochism or nostalgia. I suspect a bit of both, however, because the end result reminded me of numerous kids from my own childhood: the gingers, the ones who were always taking medicine, the pains-in-the-ass who insisted on sitting by me, and yes, the ones who had accidents -- the outcasts. How brutal grade school can be. So, read on, and let us know what your memories of this kid were, if you can think back that far.

Back in second grade, a new red-headed boy named Mark came to our class. Since we were in second grade, we were all seven. On his first day, he and I asked to go to the bathroom. The teacher didn’t like sending two kids at once, but she did anyway. He walked into the bathroom and stopped. I did not know if he had to poop or just fart in a stall, or what.

He went into the middle stall (he always went to the middle stall, I remember) and was grunting a little bit, like he was having a hard time taking his dump. This was after lunch, when I remember he and I went to the nurse to take our afternoon meds. Mine was so I could focus on my work. I don’t know what his was for. It could have been a pill to help him make a bowel movement, because he had a hard time pooping. Half an hour after he took the pill, he’d poop.

Anyway, when I got done peeing, he was still in the stall making some funny noise. “Mark,” I asked, “what are you doing?”

“I'm going ploopies,” he replied, and sounded like he said it as he was pushing. Maybe he had a big one in him. We were in second grade, so he was small; I don’t know how much food could stay in his system that long.

”Mark, hurry up,” I said, “The teacher doesn’t like it when we go to the bathroom for a long time. Why can’t you go quick? Why do you go at school?” He finally flushed the toilet and opened the door. We went back to class after we washed our hands.

The next day he came out of the stall, and it was the same thing. I went to the bathroom as I was going pee, and said again, “Why do you poop at school? No one does.”

He said, “Because I have to go.” So there he was again, grunting. I was still not sure if he really pooped or not. Later on, I stayed at the after-school program for something. I hardly ever did this, on but that day I did. Mark was there too, with me, at a table, and asked to use the bathroom. I do not think he used it earlier that day.

“Why didn't you use the bathroom during school?” I asked him. He said did not need to go earlier, but now he did. I got up and followed him. He was heading toward the bathroom across from the cafeteria, to a stall that was always nasty. Some kid would always take a dump and not flush, or there would be poop on the seat. He walked in and walked out a second later, and said the bathroom was too gross to use. But it was the only bathroom we could use at the end of the day.

”Are you going to hold it until you get home?”

”I don’t know.”

“Well, that stall you were going to go is the only one open.”

I don’t know what he was thinking, but I knew if he pooped his pants then it probably would stink, and told him that everyone would know that Mark just BM’ed. Then he would need use extra pants and underwater from the nurse’s offices, and then she would write a report saying what happened. So he decided to go in the stall across from the cafeteria. I guess he could not hold it until he got picked up.

After while I had to pee, but he was still in there. “You still pooping?” I asked.

“I've been trying to get this one out, but I can't seem to,” he replied.

”Go again when you get home.” I really had to pee.

”No. I have to go now.” I began to think he liked pooping at school. I probably told him that the toilet was nasty. “It beats my pants,” was his response.

”If you can't get the last of it out then just go back later,” I said, but all of the sudden I heard this loud plop, and “Awwwwwwwwwww.” He opened the stall door, and I notice he didn't flush. “Why did you not flush?”

”The person before me did not flush,” he claimed. “I had to flush his, so the next kid can flush mine.” Then he told me to look.

When I looked I could not believe what I saw. The poop was big for something a seven year-old would make. “Oh my God,” I said.

””I always poop that big. It’s hard to me to push it out most of the time.”

”Well, why didn't you wipe?”

”There's no more toilet paper.”

”You’re going to have a poop stain on your underwear.”

He shrugged. ”It won’t be the first.”

One day there was a fire drill—a Monday, I think, because it was a practical drill. We all went outside, which was fine; the trucks came to practices. Mark was next to me. By now he had made other friends in our class, but he still only talked to me about his poop. “How long is this going to last?” he asked. I said I didn’t know. “Because I have to use the bathroom,” he said.

“You got to hold it or go tell the teacher.”

But the teacher was no help. “You’re in second grade,” she said. “Hold it ‘til we go inside.” We had to stay in a line, one by one, and sadly I was standing behind him. All of the sudden I saw this big lump— like it came out of nowhere. He knew what he did, I think, and was hoping no one would notice. But it was hard not to.

I did not say anything at first. He put his hands over the lump, trying to hide it, but he still had a bit more in him … and he could not hold that in either. The teacher hadn’t noticed yet but I could smell it. A piece of poop came out his shorts, and another student saw and yelled, “Oh my GOD, Mark POOPED HIS PANTS!”

”Oh God,” the teacher said, “we need to find the nurse.” She was not happy with him. He did not return to class that day or the next; he was probably too embarrassed.

He asked me if I saw it happen, and I said yes. I told him it looked like a balloon blow up in his pants and it smelled like fresh poop. ”You had an accident,” I said to him. “Get over it.” Embarrassed or not, he kept pooping in the school bathrooms pretty much every day.

At the end of the year our class went on a field trip, and of course he sat next to me. I had become sick of him by then, though, because he was a pooping machine. Sure enough, he began acting funny during the trip there. He seemed like he was in pain. I knew that he was constipated. It was during the trip back that, sitting next to him again, I smelled something. When I looked at him, I saw his face was all red. He was shitting his pants. I moved to a different seat.

Everyone called him a pants pooper for the last couple weeks of school.

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