Robin was my favorite partner when I was a paramedic. We signed up for shifts together as often as we could. We were two single females with bawdy senses of humor. The guys at the firehouse nicknamed us "Laurel and Hardy" due to our respective weights -- Robin was about six feet tall and weighed three-thirty, whereas I was five-six and 112 pounds.
This was back in the early eighties, when they didn't have female dorms. So we weren't allowed to spend the night, which meant we had to leave by eleven PM on weekdays. Since we often carpooled together, we would grab a bite to eat on the way home.
This particular evening, after stopping for some doughnuts, I was driving Robin home. Halfway there, she told me she urgently had to take a shit.
"There's a gas station about half-a-mile down the road," I informed her.
"I'm not going to make it!" she replied.
"What do you mean, ‘you're not going to make it'?" I stupidly answered. "I can see their sign from here."
She clarified. "I'm going to have diarrhea in your car if you don't pull over!"
Instantly, I veered off to the shoulder. I did not want a 330-pound woman having the Hershey squirts in my little car.
Robin flung open the passenger door so hard, it bounced and smacked her in the back of her legs. She grabbed the bag of doughnuts that were perched on the dashboard and disappeared into the darkness.
I was beside myself. We were on a well-traveled highway that was busy even at eleven PM. I was wondering how many truckers would be able to see her squatting on the side of the road. Friend that I am, I decided to blow my car horn a few times to draw attention to the situation. I also took my tiny penlight (which I used to check patients' pupils) and shined it in her general direction. I couldn't see much, but I was hysterical at the thought of it. I could hear her yelling, "Kay, you bitch!"
After a few minutes, she returned to the car. Without the doughnuts.
Between my fits of laughter, I asked her, "Why did you take the doughnuts with you?"
She replied simply, "I need the wax bag to wipe my ass. I didn't want to waste the doughnuts, so I ate them while I was shitting."
This set off more peals of laughter from me. I could barely drive after that.
This story became legendary in my house after I told it to my older sister. She had just finished watching the Wizard of Oz for the millionth time and mused, "What if the tree she shat on was alive, like in the movie?"
She held her arms wide and spoke in a deep voice like the tree. I've illustrated it below.
Then she imitated the tree throwing apples at Robin to keep her away. That was twenty-five years ago and we still laugh about it today.
