It was a beautiful Midwestern spring day, so I decided to take a day off and visit a friend who lived about an hour away. He had recently had surgery and was recuperating at home. Once I arrived in town, I decided to stop by the local mall to buy him a card and a small gift. As I was going into the Hallmark Card store, my colon began grumbling discontentedly. I realized that this little shopping trip was being pre-empted by the need to unburden myself of this morning's Denny's Grand Slam.

I had been to this mall before and I knew that the nearest public men's room was next to the mall office, which was thankfully nearby. I went into the stall and got down to business.

This particular B.M. turned out to be a really messy one. You know the kind I'm talking about, where the output has the thickness and consistency of wallpaper paste and seems to require the better part of an entire roll of toilet paper to get cleaned off. Another frustrating by-product of this type of crapfest is that no matter how careful one is, it is seemingly impossible to avoid smearing some of the nasty stuff onto one's hand. This was, in fact, what happened to me: a nasty brown skid mark across my thumb and forefinger.

Being the conscientious shitter that I am, I am generally diligent about flushing the toilet at the conclusion of my anal purging. However, in this instance my primary focus was cleaning the rogue poo off of my left hand. I fully intended to go back and flush after I rectified the situation. I really did.

Just as I was leaving the stall, one of the mall custodians entered the restroom and began mopping the floor. I went to the sink, applied liberal amounts of bathroom dispenser soap and hot water to my assaulted appendage, and washed vigorously. As I began drying my hands, the custodian saw the pile of un-flushed ass sludge and toilet paper that I had left behind in the toilet bowl.

He gave me a disgusted look. "Look at this mess!" he groused. "What the hell is wrong with you? Don't you know how to flush?"

Now, I thought the guy was overreacting a bit and kind of being a jerk; but, realizing that he probably had to deal with stuff like this a lot, I tried to empathize. So I hoped to neutralize the situation by saying, "Sorry, man. I was going to flush as soon as I got washed up."

"Like hell you were!" Apparently he was having a very bad day. "You were just going to leave without flushing and let me clean up your mess for you!"

This character was starting to tick me off; but, not wanting to escalate the situation any further and get into a ridiculous argument over an unflushed toilet, I said, "Look, dude, I said I would flush the damn toilet, and I'm going to. So chill out!" With that, I marched into the stall and slammed my hand down on the flusher handle.

And that's when things turned ugly.

I admit it now: during the course of my defecation marathon, it would have been diligent of me to have flushed the toilet one or two times to prevent things from piling up. But, unfortunately, I had not done this, and so the entire fruit of my labor was still proudly on display at the time of the fateful flush. I realized my mistake almost immediately upon hitting the handle, but of course it was too late by then. So we both watched in horror as the toxic turd and toilet paper swill rose ever higher in the bowl.

"Oh, God, no!" I was thinking to myself. "Please stop! Don't go over the rim!"

No such luck. The nasty glop began to spill over the edge of the bowl and onto my new pal's freshly-mopped floor.

If looks could kill, then you could have tagged my toe and hauled me off to morgue city. I think I could actually see the vein pulsating in the guy's forehead.