This latest tale, like the golf course experience, involves my penchant for walking long distances. By long distance, I mean twenty-mile hikes. It's not that I'm devoted to fitness -- far from it. I'm a junk food junkie by nature, and have survived two years now at the slophouse cafeteria known as "Slaughterhouse Five" that serves the freshman and sophomore dorms in our Quad.

No, since I got here, I have developed a very strange obsession with walking alone and thinking. Maybe some other folks here can relate or even explain why some college students feel the need to escape the forced type of "togetherness" in dormitory life with a sort of self-imposed exile. Since I don't have a car, I walk. And I just keep walking, talking to myself for hours, thinking through the insanity and stupidity of the world and how this messed-up dysfunctional reality I'm stuck at is preparing to send out the next generation of failed Amway salesmen named Grayson.

But I'll get to the point. Before daylight savings time kicked in, the days were longer, and I went over to Slaughterhouse Five for the evening meal with Trish. We have both managed to keep off the freshman fifteen, possibly because the food is inedible. But I was hungry on this particular Tuesday night and here's what I ate. The following is taken from the school cafeteria's website:

• Chicken Fried Steak. Translation: a congealed, stinking, steaming disk of cowloaf plastered with gravy-like brain droppings and bits of floating and mashed bovine testicles.

  
  
  

• Squash Casserole. Translation: the strained and steamed husk remnants plowed from a swamp in Bulgaria, deep-fried in a boiling pot of lard-flavored cheese-whip.

  
  
  

• Pecan Pie. Translation: uncooked and unleavened pie dough slathered with space-age, molasses-flavored bean curd and topped with the ground crabshells and peanut husks swept off the floor of a Vietnamese Massage Parlor.

Trish wouldn't eat her meal, but I plowed in. She watched me in fascination, making her customary comments. "You'll eat anything," she said. And then "EWWWWWW," when I tried slicing through the chicken fried steak with a plastic knife.

I responded with one my usual cracks. "I'm practicing for my future career as a funeral director for deformed woodchucks." She tried to poke me with her plastic fork.

At the end of the meal she said "The usual?" and I said "Yep." She knew I needed to do my escape walk.

It took me about fifty minutes (I never wear a watch of carry a cell phone) before it hit. I was right in the middle of a major suburban mega-neighborhood at least ten minutes from any major road or fast food joint. (I like to walk in these types of neighborhoods after dark.) I was at least five miles from school.

I turned on my heels and headed back toward the nearest major road, recalling a Wendy's that was always open. I was pretty sure I would make it if I walked fast. But the faster I walked, the more my anus burned. I slowed down to a crawl and the burning stopped, but I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere. Every couple minutes I had to stop completely because the distended slurd was trying to slide out.

After a while, though, the pain went away, and I resumed my normal walk, almost forgetting about my mini-emergency. But the burning started again and again I repeated the process: a fast trot, a slow crawl, and then an in-between stride in which I had to stop and squeeze my nads together.

I started to worry. The burning continued and I could feel my ring start to swell. The slurd wanted out and the ring was preparing for its imminent departure. A sulfurous shart made my level of alarm -- already high -- much higher. I would never make it to Wendy's.

I started to hyperventilate, and my Fight or Flight mechanism kicked in. A slimy sweat started oozing out of my armpits and I felt cold. My lips were tingling. Whatever I'd eaten was much more dangerous than anything else I'd ever eaten before. My body wanted rid of it as soon as possible, and it was starting to eject it out of every pore, hole, and orifice.

I took a knee and accepted my fate. I was going to shart myself. I released hold of the slurd.

Just then, something weird happened. The slurd came out -- and then it slid back in.

The burning stopped.

Walking again, I felt much better.

I have no explanation. I stopped sweating and hyperventilating. I felt well enough to try to reach the Wendy's. It was actually a McDonald's, as it turned out. I went in and tried to release the slurd, but now the tide had turned. The slurd was happy where it was. I remained on the pooter for quite a while, but there was no sign of the slurd. So I gave up, went back to the dorm, and ordered a pizza.