The first concrete memory that I have of living with my family was after we moved to Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1973. I was two and my sister had just been born. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment with a big living room in a hilltop neighborhood in the borough's East End.

The area around Highland and McNary Avenues seemed to be teeming with custom cars, and there was a little shop on the corner opposite run by a guy called Tiny. In 1976, when I was five years old, I went to my corner (the one where my apartment complex was located), and executed what was either my first instance of Shameless Shitting or of turd terrorism, depending on your point of view.

I remember taking a walk around my block, admiring the custom cars, when all of a sudden the urge hit.

I remember thinking, "I can't get to the bathroom fast enough... I'm gonna shit myself and my mother's gonna be mad at me!"

I remember looking around. It was the middle of the afternoon, and there was no one in sight, so I dropped my brown corduroy pants and squatted on the sidewalk. It seemed like it took forever to poop. I was worried that someone would spot me and call the cops. But, thankfully, no one did.

When I was sure that I had fully offloaded, I pulled up my pants and stood up to see what I had produced. I was amazed at what was on the sidewalk. It seemed like it was two feet long (though it was most likely only around one foot) and three inches around. I then hustled back up to the apartment bathroom to check for skid marks... thankfully, there were none. But I remember grabbing some toilet paper, wetting the end, and wiping just to make sure I was clean.

For a year-and-a-half after that, until we moved into a house on the other side of town, I'd avoid that corner, but I'd still observe what I'd left behind from a distance. I'm surprised that no one attempted to remove the log I'd dropped. I did notice that it would keep shrinking as time passed.

Fast forward to October, 1987. I'd just gotten my driver's license. One day, just for sentimental reasons, I took a drive through my old neighborhood. I pulled up to the corner where I'd "made my mark" when I was five and saw a baked-in skid mark on the sidewalk. Wow! I guess no one still bothered to clean up what I'd left, and it degraded over time, but not completely. Some marks just don't fade right away.

I've never done anything like that since then, but I think that I might have been more conscious of where bathrooms (including porta-johns) were located in an area.