My wife and my mother are usually the ones who have poop trouble while on the road. The number of "unproductive" rest stops I make when traveling with them borders on ridiculous. If the PA on the plane crackles and the captain's voice informs us that we will be in a holding pattern, it is guaranteed the old lady will say "Oh, shit!" and have to go to the bathroom. For my mom, the whole time she is visiting is considered "traveling," which means her fecal factory shuts down for the first four or five days, until she resorts to extreme measures like drinking water, eating prunes, inserting suppositories, and downing all kinds of laxatives and liquid dynamite.
I, however, like my father, was blessed with the cast-iron stomach and a camel's bladder. But every once in a while, even I get the wide-eyed I-gotta-find-a-bathroom look.
In the mornings, my limit in the car is usually about one hour before I have to shit. Good thing I don't work too far from home. On the many occasions I've had to drive extended distances to customer sites in the morning, more often than not I would have to stop and find a poop palace within an hour of leaving the house.
My days are usually blissful. I take two or three dumps in the morning. If I get to the magic third crap before nine AM, I know it's gonna be a great day. Other times, though, I'm lucky to get one out before going to work. Those are the kind of days in which trouble is brewing in Poop City with a capital "P".
When I read about someone's "two-minute warning" on PoopReport, I knew exactly what it meant. After a wedding a few years back, the in-laws, the wife, and I were driving back to our hotel on I-84 near New Britain, Connecticut. It was late fall and unusually dark that night. I was driving along and whistling when I felt the two-minute warning.
"Unholy shit, Batman!" I thought. All the beer, booze, and rich food I partook in at the party must've reacted in my gut. And of course, there were no rest areas or fast food joints in sight.
The in-laws and the wife are chatting along, totally unaware of what was transpiring. We were twenty or thirty minutes from the hotel, and I was squeezing the rosebud shut to keep from ruining my suit and the driver's seat. I let a few exits pass by, hoping to find someplace to stop, but it was pitch black everywhere and there was no hope in sight. "What kind of suburban interstate bullshit is this?" I wondered, as the pain and pressure intensified.
After two or three false alarms, I finally, and without a warning to my passengers, just pulled off the road. The chatting stopped immediately. "I gotta get out for a minute," I proclaimed. I ran out of the car to a strategic wooded area, dropped my drawers, and squatted. Ever ready for game day situations, I blasted the doo doo daiquiri into the leaves below without splattering on my clothes.
When I got back to the car, the chatty passengers, who couldn't make out what I was doing in the dark distance, thought I had puked. Yeah, like I would be driving if I were that drunk!
(It was a few years later when they finally figured out I had run out to the woods for a diarrhea appointment.)
An unholy odor and a horrible brown stain in that hallowed spot marks my historic stop. Perhaps it will be a memorial rest stop someday. That stretch of highway could sure use one!