As many before me have stated, I also suffer from some serious bowel problems, and consequently must relieve myself three times more often than the normal human being. With this said, it's shocking that I have yet to find myself staring with disappointment at ruined underwear. Unfortunately, though, I'm sure my time will come.

Nevertheless, I do have a great pants-pooping tale -- one that belongs to my friend T-Bill. Though I was the third person to hear it within ten minutes of it's occurrence, I have heard it told enough from T-Bill and his roommate since that I might as well have been there. It takes place just above two years ago: January 2nd, 2005.

T-Bill's family resides in Penticton, British Columbia. T-Bill himself lives in Vancouver. So a visit concludes with a six-hour bus ride back to the city. Such circumstances should leave one with hesitation when one has to crunch one out. T-Bill would blame it on bad chicken and eggnog. I would chalk it up to a series of poor decisions.

T-Bill was in a mad dash out his front door to catch his bus back to Vancouver from a long, well-fed Christmas break, when he was stopped by his mom. This particular family isn't one to squander legal tender, and a half-carton of eggnog is just that: wasted money. She made him chug the rest of it back, adding it to a stomach packed full of chicken and a plethora of side dishes before sending him on his way.

T-Bill made it to his bus on time, sat, and got comfortable. I'm told it wasn't too far into his trip that his intestines awoke and become irritable. Hot, fetid steam escaped his rectum, sending word to his brain that he'd best be prompt to the bathroom. He entertained the thought of decimating the tiny, almost airplane lavatory-sized washroom on the bus, but decided not to. This decision was not made out of respect for fellow travelers, but rather because "it's too frigging hard to shit on a bus toilet."

So he told his now-begging anus to clam it, and settled in for a long, uncomfortable, gaseous trek home.

However, as he traversed BC's interior, his dinner began to gnaw, scratch, and even kick at his cornhole. It wanted out. But T-Bill, always the trooper that he is, wanted to wait until he got home. Ignoring the flop-sweat on his forehead, eyebrows furrowed, he maintained his composure, even through the quivering and severe guttural cramps that were causing him to clutch his carry-on like a child abductor dragging off a toddler.

Finally, uneasily, it came to the end: the bus entered downtown Vancouver. It was here that he thought of using the massive bus depot's many bathrooms, but by this time the cramps had dissipated and he felt he could survive the next twenty minutes on the SkyTrain until he made it to his apartment.

He had barely made it to the SkyTrain station when the cramps came back; and now he had snowboard gear, his carry-on, and luggage with him. All of this extra baggage didn't stop him from waddling at top speed upstairs and into the first train that came. He sat, trembling and sweating, anticipating shitting himself. I would imagine he began planning his escape routes, his underwear disposal points, and which shirt in his suitcase he cared least about if he needed something to wipe with. I assume this is what he thought -- in his retellings, T-Bill only says that he was so terrified he can't remember what he thought.

He reached the front door of his apartment after a short walk that probably seemed like an eternity. Keys were fumbled with, swear words were uttered, and feces shook hands with underpants. He dashed to the elevator, pressed the button, and waited. 6... 5... 4... 3...

And then, in a state of horror and relief, he shat his pants, full throttle.

There was no stopping it. His turgid sphincter had done its best, but it was out of breath. A whirlwind of gas and lumpy-yet-soft poo pulled itself like demons from hell out of his rectum, licking his underwear and filling his butt crack, occupying as much space as it could find within his pants.

2... 1... G... The doors opened. At least nobody was in the elevator. He panicked and threw all of his belongings into the waiting elevator, then stepped forward to put himself in the same room. This released the excrement from its cotton confines, allowing it to roll down his leg and out onto the floor into a neat pile, much like cookie dough on an oven sheet. T-Bill was at the point of not caring, and he rode the upward, hoping and praying to whatever that nobody needed to get on the elevator with him.

And nobody did. He threw all of his bags into the hallway and ran for it, kicking through his door like Jean Claude Van Damme kicking through a bad guy's face, shouting, "DARREN! YOU'VE GOTTA GO AND GRAB MY SHIT FROM THE HALLWAY!"

The bathroom door slammed shut, leaving Darren in a state of confusion. Thinking T-Bill was being chased, Daren cautiously peeked into the hallway, only to find scattered luggage strewn about. No Triads, no Mafia members, no one. But he noticed the shit-smell.

"Dude? What smells like shit?" he inquired from the front door.

"...I fucking shit my pants!" was the humiliated reply from the bathroom.

As any human being would, Darren exploded with laughter and began to gather the luggage. Since he didn't find any poop with the luggage, though, he went down to the lobby to investigate. Sure enough, he found a football-sized lump in the shape of a Goomba in front of one of the three elevators in the lobby of their apartment building.

More laughter, and then he ran up the stairs, not wanting to use of the elevator because it was too close to the pile.

T-Bill was out of the bathroom by now, with his clothing all in a black garbage bag save his shoes (which he still wears to this day, thanks to determined cleaning). Darren called my roommate and I to tell us what was happening while T-Bill, now semi-clean, went back downstairs to the lobby with a dustpan to clean up.

T-Bill peeked out the stairwell door, much like Darren had, saw that no one was around, and ran over to his leavings.

Dustpans aren't made for such messes. T-Bill served only in smearing his poop along the floor and pushing it into the spacing between the tiles. He gave up and vanished back upstairs.

At this point Devan, Darren, and myself were all in the know and all laughing our testicles off at T-Bill's expense. For added humor, their apartment building had a closed-circuit television channel broadcasting feeds from the four security camera around the entrance of their building, including one that was aimed at the elevators. Though they couldn't see the feces itself, they could laugh hysterically as they watched small, cute couples enter the lobby, notice the steaming pile, and tiptoe around it nervously.

The next day, the news was spread to our whole group of friends over a sushi lunch.

I have since stopped giving T-Bill a hard time about it -- it's two years old, and I have other things to rip on him for. Darren still does, though. Almost one year before this instance, Darren had gotten so drunk that he barfed all over his bed. T-Bill exaggerated the story to some friends, saying that Darren had shit himself as well. The story quickly got back to Darren's hometown, and Darren has since been known as a "Pantshitter" amongst his old high school friends. T-Bill's incident, for Darren, is thus the epitome of irony.