our little trailer [1], careful not to wake the kids -- our new "real" house won't be ready for another two weeks. I got dressed, then swallowed two eggs smothered in Tapatio hot sauce, a piece of toast, a pint of milk, and a pear. I visited the bathroom to clean up a bit. As I turned to walk out of the room, my butt saw the toilet and was reminded of its morning duty.
No way, buddy. I signaled. Just give me till 7:20.
As I walked out the back door, there was an almost audible rumble downstairs, followed by a sloppy shifting sensation. Yesterday's diet raced quickly through my mind: raisin oatmeal for breakfast had been my last normal meal. You see, it's that time of year. Our town is overflowing with the fresh products of gardens and fruit trees, and I find it hard to stop eating the homegrown stuff. I ate apples, pears, plums, sweet potatoes, peaches, garlic, onions. I gobbled up spinach, zucchini, beets, and more tomatoes that you could shake a stick at. I ate four eggs pickled in the same brine that had pickled a quart of beets earlier. Then there was the salsa. Every year, Smokey Mike makes the damnedest salsa out of his garden-fresh ingredients. The habaneras that he grew this year were so hot that they killed the cabbage in the row on one side and stunted the growth of the bell peppers on the other. (The bell peppers, interestingly enough, turned out hot, too.) Every year I tell him it's not that hot, and every year he makes it hotter to punish me. It's been way too hot for some years. But it's good, and I had about eight ounces with some corn chips. Thank you, Mike. The last thing I ate before bed was a big bowl of raw jicama. Yum.
My brain quickly cataloged all that and told me to take a dump. But it was 6:54. I would have to poop at work.
It's possible that I have the world's best commute: 1.2 miles uphill. It's short enough that I can take almost any practical mode of transportation -- walking, biking, driving, you name it. I have a neighbor who rides his horse to work. When he gets to the parking lot, he gets off and the horse goes back home. (He hasn't trained the horse to come pick him up yet.) There is a paved road and four or five dirt routes that run parallel to it. With that in mind, I opted, as usual, for the 1983 Honda XR 500 -- the bike that ruled the desert for twenty years. For a machine that was manufactured when I was but twelve years old, it has impressive performance.
When my spread ass came down on the seat, I was made painfully aware of a nice, warm turtlehead. After a brief warm-up, I wrung the throttle and shot out of the yard in a fountain of dirt and gravel.
When time is short, the most direct route on my commute includes a big hump that, at high speed, becomes a jump. Normally DungDaddy doesn't like to ride in the sky, but one must do what one must do. It's a very smooth jump and the ground is sloped such that the landing is not bad; but right behind the landing pad there is an old retaining wall that requires a sharp right turn. Landing a 270-pound motorcycle -- with the accompanying 270-pound rider -- is not easy. At least, not easy enough to do without paying attention. Attention that comes at the expense of remembering to, say, clamp your butt-cheeks as tight as you can.
Readers often complain about how unsavory poopy-pants stories are, and I don't blame them. I'm not a big pants-crapper. I think this is the fourth or fifth time it's happened since I can remember -- and once it happened when I was knocked unconscious in a mine accident, so I don't take credit for that instance.
So there was a horrible squishiness in my trousers, and I was immediately shamed. But the release of one cup of brown, tomatoey pulp did not relieve my need to crap, so I figured what the hell and just went with it. In retrospect, this was a colossal mistake. The one cup quickly turned into about three quarts. I continued on to work and arrived right before seven. Riding up to the HR manager's office window, I knocked and told her I would be thirty minutes late. I sped off, aware of the growing slurpiness in my pants. Utterly despicable. The only place I hope to find understanding is here, at PoopReport.
The aftermath was pretty straightforward, so I won't bore you with those details. I had to keep the kids from finding out, because they would blab it at school. My wife pursed her lips and made that understanding face. The putrid, burning crust on the exhaust pipe (soon to be gone) and a little pancake batter outside the HR office are all that remain. That and the new wisdom: that the fall harvest may require some unexpected accommodation. Even a slight rescheduling of your morning routine.
