I came into work after not eating any breakfast, which always screws up my schedule as far as eating and pooping is concerned. It's like if you drink on a Sunday night -- it ruins the rest of the week because your body never catches up, and you're forced to drink on Friday and Saturday nights both, thereby perpetuating the cycle. So, with nothing eaten, I sat at my desk, staring at the computer, glazing over and waiting to die of malnutrition.
Now, the problem is easily solved. All I had to do was head downstairs to the cafeteria and get something quick and light to hold me over until I could get something more filling on my lunch break. But no. The cafeteria downstairs sucks. The only edible food-like substances down there are grilled cheese sandwiches and doughnuts. I didn't want either of those two things. So I decided to play the waiting game. Bad move.
I waited until lunch to eat; and when I did, I went all out. I swung over to Jack-In-The-Box and got the #6 Ultimate Cheeseburger Meal with a Diet Coke, no ice. I devoured the entire meal in a matter of minutes, mixing ranch dressing and ketchup in a bowl like pee and cucka. I traveled the half-mile back to work and felt a pang of nervousness cross my furrowed brow: the shitsweats.
Climbing up the stairs to the second floor where I had my cube, I dropped off my keys and cell phone at my desk. In hindsight, this was not the most tactically sound move at that point. It was like an airline pilot taking the plane back up to 30,000 feet when it's time to land. I jettisoned all other ballast and did the brisk walk of shame across the hall, in plain sight to passersby. It was still lunchtime and the people who watched me enter probably thought I might never return. Only an empty desk filled with stuff to analyze would remain.
I always think clearest just before a shit. There's a moment of calm that envelops me, though it only lasts a few seconds. That's why I always bring something to write with.
So as I dropped anchor in the 3rd stall -- the one usually reserved for the handicapped -- I contemplated how frivolous my lunch purchase was. That #6 cost me $5.60, and I was about to dispel at least $4.95 of it in the porcelain below.
As I began curling pipe, I realized something about this one was different. It came from somewhere other than all the other butt nuggets I had hatched over the years. It felt wet on the way out, and dripped down on the shit below like wet beach sand leaking through a child's fingers. I leaned my arse off the bowl to inspect what had become of the Ultimate Cheeseburger and his fry friends. They had done something so wonderful, something I had never seen.
It was a conic shit castle, cresting out of the water like a shark fin chasing down the Police Chief of a small coastal tourist town. But neither Roy Scheider nor Robert Shaw could kill this beast. It was a glacier, somehow migrated from Arctic waters through the plumbing to this toilet now under my bum. The Titanic had collided with a smaller glacier than this.
They always say that the part of the glacier you see coming out of the water is but the tiniest piece. In this instance, too, that dictum held all too true. The glacier snaked into the pipes. It engulfed and contaminated all the water in the once-white bowl.
Not thinking, I hit the lever to flush this glacial beast down the tubes, intending it never to be seen again. That was a rookie mistake I hadn't made in years. It bubbled and burped, and I started to get real queasy and nervous at the thought of my $4.95 (though it looked like $495) worth of Cosby Kids sprawled all over the government's tiled bathroom floor.
Luckily for me, this did not happen. It sank back down, though it would never leave the bowl. Pants still at my ankles, I had enough presence of mind to perform an Astaire with a tap-tap-tap of my feet to let anyone know who was out there that I was definitely in this stall. Then I was silent for a bit, hearing only my heart race and the toilet struggle with its own inferiority. Tactically, I was thinking clear as day, and I now knew it was time to move. I had performed a stall jump before, but never with pooplets, dingleberries, and pants around ankles; nor with an Arctic ass-glacier the size of Texas bobbing in the Brown Sea in stall #3 (handicapped).
I cracked the door, peeked out, and made my move quickly and stealthily. My only worry was that some handicapped co-worker would wheel themselves in as I made the stall switch and they would connect me with the Titanic-sinking glacier in the only stall they were able to use. But it went off without a hitch; I sat back down on the cold porcelain seat, finished piling rope, wiped like God himself forced my hand, washed up, and took one final glance into stall #3 (handicapped) at the monster that nearly sunk me.
I got out of there alive that day, thank God. How? I do not know. No one saw me and no one suspected anything. But I pray nightly for Rosita the cleaning woman, because I know she cries herself to sleep every night.
-- Adam