On yet another brisk day in cold, cold Canada, with the polar bears drinking their Coca-Cola and the whalers waving me a happy hello as I walked down the iceway to school, I felt a sense of bliss and happiness that can only come from being an innocent eight-year-old boy. Being a very precocious child, I deeply enjoyed school, and was always eager to get extra work that the other children didn't (a practice largely contributing to my massive unpopularity for the first sixteen years of my life). My school was a small, very old building in Sydney, Nova Scotia; it would later be torn down to make way for prefabricated houses.
I happily sat through my classes that morning, my third grade teacher talking with me listening attentively and laughing at her jokes, while others poked fingers, pencils, and other various objects into various orifices and threw various scoopings therefrom. After we started to talk about the ever-so-complex matter of plurality involving words ending with the letter X, I grew bored and took a bathroom break; I felt a little like I had to deposit a brown Twinkie.
I waddled off to the bathroom, as I was a pudgy, round little kid (attributing yet more to my gross unpopularity). Upon arriving, I sat my rump down upon the cold porcelain -- remember the polar bears -- and grunted my damnedest. I had not yet realized the way of Poodhism: only when you are at peace with yourself and with the toilet will the negative energy flow out of you. As a consequence, anyone entering the bathroom heard the odd, painful-sounding gruntings of a fat midget on the can.
I pushed and pushed like the Little Train That Could, except my anus was clearly his derailed brother, the Little Train That Couldn't. I resigned myself to standing up, wiping off just in case I'd shot out some raisins without my knowledge, and returning to the classroom. I really didn't like being questioned or confronted by teachers, because I always felt that the vegetative morons in the class (who could murder in front of you your sister, the teacher, and the Governor General, and walk away with no more than a wrist slap) deserved much more of the teacher's scoldings than I did. As a result, whenever confronted, I would respond somewhat sarcastically and harshly.
"What took so long in the bathroom?" my kind-but-inconsiderate teacher demanded in front of the class.
"My digestion," I snappily replied.
I was met with a scowl and a "sit down" accompanied by a plethora of comments from my ‘peers': "Oooh, dee-jess-shun!" "Nerd!" "Weiner!" "Cornelius!" (One really odd kid got kicks out of calling me "Cornelius"; to this day, I don't know why.)
The bell rang and I happily skipped out to the negative two-hundred-and-sixty-two schoolyard. I played, desperately trying to avoid succumbing to the harsh, brutal Canadian elements. And I downed a sandwich of leafy vegetables and mayonnaise, as I really just didn't like meat at the time.
(My lunch is relevant to my story, of course, because the sheer amount of fiber and near total lack of iron in my diet led to some pretty serious powershitting; I pinched loaves regularly three to five times daily. On this day, I hadn't. And this was odd -- very odd.)
We filed back into class upon the sounding of the ice-bell (basically the foghorn from a hockey game). We promptly sat down in our seats and prepared to continue our stimulating discussion on the letter X. It was around this time I felt pockets of gas and other nether-beings moving around down under -- like an Australian rebellion gone hostile, the southern inhabitants were attempting a bloody coup on my brown bastion.
"Hey, no problem," I thought to myself. After all, it was after lunch -- there was very little of the school day left, and I knew I could hold it until I could leave. I knew it, that is, until the proletariat poop in my southern realms, too long held prisoner by the abysmal treatment of my despotic colon, launched one more salvo on the bay doors, and I could feel sheer knife-like pains shooting all through my lower body.
This was going to be a horrific shit -- the kind of shit about which documentaries are made.
Realizing that I could hold it no longer, I raised my hand deftly into the air, waving somewhat urgently. "Yes, Matthew?" the teacher enquired.
"May I go to the bathroom?" I gruntingly replied.
"No. You went before lunch, and you had the entire lunch hour to go. So you stay here until we're done."
The horror!
I knew my doom was approaching. Choosing not to plead with the teacher, I instead decided to consult with the general minding the rebellion, which had now pushed well beyond the poop factory district and was pressing down the Hershey highway with the vigor of a mob only accurately depicted in the works of Mary Shelley. The general advised me that we should form a line; and so I clenched my butt cheeks so hard I swear I split atoms.
Like a row of riot police smashing batons down on filthy unwashed hippies, my ass cheeks faithfully guarded my grey sweatpants from the attackers pressing to put an end to free trade, critical thought, and clean clothing -- assailants wishing to put the last cherry on the cake sealing my unpopularity into the stones of time, ensuring I would be dateless and fat until I was sixty-two. My regard in the public eye was already all but demolished, as the previous week I had shown up to school in a Power Rangers costume, sure that no one would recognize me and that I would somehow have mystical Kung-Fu powers that would allow me to eradicate my oppressors. I had been mistaken.
The pressure grew to a point at which I was sure I would implode. My face was red and I was sweating and grunting loudly, occasionally letting out the odd, sharp-sounding, painfully hot fart. The kids around me knew the end was near and moved away like Englishmen avoiding plague-bearers. I waved my hand frantically to the teacher to allow me release; she denied me yet again.
And there I sat in a conundrum: not wanting to defy my teacher, but not wanting to destroy my life. I was at the pivotal crossroads at which every small child should stand at one point in his or her life: should I disobey the teacher and run to the bathroom, or should I utterly shit myself in front of my peers?
What happened next is terrible. When most people lose control of their bowels, a small lump of matter forces its way out of the anus, and out some more, until eventually you've soiled yourself. But I guess I'm not most people. While I was pondering the nature of defiance verses self-discipline in a heavily introspective debate, I lost control of the forces; and a deadly explosion finished off the rest of my riot police, leaving their scattered remains all about. I had lost control. A terrific and awe-inspiring CRACK of a fart escaped my anus, fueled by the sheer power of one-hundred percent refined green mucky diarrhea. The noise of the farting was a million times amplified by the hard wooden seat against which my ass was situated.
A torrent of green muck escaped me. I sat awestruck, not knowing what to do with myself. The torrent continued until the crap had literally gone down my leg and was now burning my skin with its acidic glop. Eventually my shoes filled with shit, a fact I never let on -- I don't know why shit in my shoes was more embarrassing than shit in my pants, but it was.
As I stood up, tears rolled down my young face. The back of my pants were absolutely saturated in sheer, vile feces. I walked to the bathroom, my shoes making the noises of rubber boots filled with water, splat-splat-splatting along the floor. I plunked myself into a stall and wept.
I ended up inspiring pity in the mother of one of my fellow students, an employee at the school. She gave me an extra pair of pants.
I packed the glob of shit-soaked filth into my backpack and left. I just left.
Thus began the most repulsive walk home I have ever endured.
