Editor's note: this story first appeared as a comment on the most inopportune time to poop poll. Clearly it is worthy of attention on its own.
Christmas cantata, my church, 1986. I had a solo, and I was very nervous about it. On stage shortly after the program began, I felt the first distant rumblings of bowel thunder in the distance. Low, ominous, portentous of a great storm brewing. No problem, though -- I have had the nervous stomach thing before. I could wait it out.
After the first song, a mighty south wind began to blow. Repeatedly. It smelled like a cross between rotten eggs, carrion, and pure evil. Try as I might, my quivering pucker valve could not restrain the rising wind. I noticed to my chagrin that the noses of my nearest co-performers were beginning to wrinkle in disgust; yet the putrid zephyrs relentlessly sallied forth from the cave of the winds.
About fifteen minutes into the program, the wrenching fist of fecal fury began to twist my tortured innards. I felt like I was in labor on steroids. The pain was incredible -- I was trying to sing like an angel, but simply standing straight took everything I had. And the foul fetid winds of wrath continued to blow. My solo was coming up, but I no longer was in church. I was in a hell of ceaseless torment, and there were twenty minutes of program left.
Finally, it was my turn to sing. I gripped the microphone as though it were the cause of my agony. Then it happened. My sweaty palms lost their tentative grasp on the microphone, and it fell to the floor with a reverberating crash. I could feel my face twist in pain as I gingerly bent over to pick up the fallen mic. I grasped it, and I had started to straighten back up when a lower abdominal spasm of 10.9 on the Richter scale grasped my intestines in a fit of rage. I don't clearly recall the events that ensued, but one of my (now former) friends told me later what followed in awful detail. I apparently said, "Oh!" and then the dam burst.
With a sound like the ripping of a great sheet, my bowels let loose their pent up fury. A hot, greasy, yellowish-brown flood of liquid excrement ran through my underwear, pantyhose, slip, skirt, and robe with the force of a hurricane. And it kept coming. We were wearing the white satin choir robes, and most of the ladies were wearing white shoes. Well, they were white when we ascended the stage.
I then apparently opened my mouth and a flood of vitriolic bile issued forth as if from a firehose. I barfed on the poor girl ahead of me, who immediately began to retch violently.
Someone had the presence of mind to close the stage curtains and inform the audience that illness had unexpectedly struck. I had never been more mortified (nor more sick) in my life. The only thing that helped ease my shame was that later we found out that the chicken salad sandwiches we had eaten before the cantata were plastered with salmonella. Several others were afflicted as I was; albeit none so publicly. My anxiety must have hastened the onset of diarrhea and vomiting.
Needless to say, I no longer attend that church. My husband and I have moved (unrelated to this event), and I no longer hear from the recipients of my explosive bowel problems. I can think of no more inopportune time for the need to defecate to hit.