So there I was. I had just finished my morning coffee and cigarette. Next in my morning office ritual is usually a stop in my favorite stall to relieve myself of last night's dinner. Unfortunately for me, dinner consisted of a contest between my friend and I to see who could eat the most sliders from White Castle.
On my way to sit on my interoffice throne to start my day out right, my boss cornered me in the hallway and told me that there was an emergency at our office in Detroit. And that I, along with our VP of Sales and head of engineering, would be leaving immediately to deal with it. I wasn't feeling warnings of imminent danger, so I skipped my favorite part of my morning and hopped in a car and off to the airport.
I am afraid of heights and terrified of flying. And because this was a last-minute emergency, that meant we would be forgoing the big, comfortable airlines for a small, two-engine private plane. The flight there was uneventful, aside from me white-knuckling the seat and sweating bullets the entire two-hour flight. Once we got to Detroit we were incredibly busy for the rest of the day, and when we left the office I was actually looking forward to the chance to just sit down on the plane. Looking forward, that is, until I saw the dark clouds looming on the horizon. At this moment I felt a twinge in my stomach. Pre-flight jitters, surely.
After we got back on the plane and began to move out onto the runway, I began my mantra of the Lord's Prayer and Hail Marys. "Hail Mary, full of grace, the lor -- oh no!" It hit me.
"It's okay," I thought. "I'll wait until we are in the air and excuse myself to the lavatory." And then I realized how screwed I was, seeing as I was on a tiny plane with few luxuries, none of which was a bathroom. "This is it," I told myself. "The moment that separates the men from the boys." I was going to have to restrain this beast for the entire flight. Letting off a little pressure was out of the question, seeing as I was basically in a can of recycled air with two of the heads of the company I just started working for. So I gritted my teeth and hoped the pained expression on my face and copious amount of perspiration pouring from my body would be mistaken for my fear of flying.
Halfway into the flight, I was doing pretty well. The big brown was knocking on the backdoor, but I wasn't giving into his demands to escape from my colonic prison. Then it happened. Remember those clouds I saw looming in the distance? It was a storm -- a big one. Suddenly we hit an air pocket and the plane dropped about a hundred feet. I screamed like a little girl on a carnival ride. And when my attention was directed elsewhere, my little friend decided to take advantage and let out a little burp.
"Damn," I thought. "Now two very important people are going to spend the next thirty minutes marinating in my own personal blend of herbs and spices." But I did feel a little relieved and the smell wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.
My brief feeling of relief, however, was quickly changed to one of horror as I shifted in my seat and realized my cheeks aren't supposed to glide that easily against one another. I had just sharted. For the next thirty minutes I tried to sit as still as I could and squeeze my cheeks together, lest a whiff of my predicament reached my superiors. When we landed and I was doing my duckwalk to the nearest bathroom to freshen up, I had to laugh -- I had just had the crap scared out of me, literally.
On the bright side, for the rest of that flight, I never once thought about how I was in a tiny plane in a terrifying thunderstorm.