In the summer of 1974, when I was five, I broke my arm. Instead of falling off of one of the sixteen-hand horses I had been riding all spring, I fell off of the back of a bicycle being pedaled by my neighbor -- a ride which didn't cost ten dollars an hour, like the horse did. I was a horse lover, and my parents were dirt poor because they had built a house the previous year, so ten dollars was a lot of money to them. It was a serious break -- the ulna had completely fractured into two pieces at the growth plate, requiring me to undergo surgery and lay in traction for over a week. This accident gave them the reason they were probably looking for to stop paying for riding lessons. It was my ultimate screw up.

Around this time, my brother had begun Little League. Even though my mom could have stayed home from his games, she toted me along; seeing Todd run around on the field took precedence over broken arm. I didn't mind, though; there was a lot of trouble I could get into unattended at the ball field, and I was often successful in this endeavor.

Dedicated to his bench warming, Mom set me free to run wild and unsupervised for hours at a time. I swung on the natural vines behind the first base dugout and dug in the dirt set aside from the newly installed parking lot. I got free candy from the concession ladies after I spent my allowance of one dollar on penny fish and Bottle Caps. We had bets on who could pee the farthest, Teddy or Mikey. (It was usually Teddy.) It was great.

Unless I had to take a shit.

To this day, the Virginia Road Little League Park of Hermitage, Pennsylvania, is a clusterfuck of logistics well thought-out for baseball but poorly executed for reality. While it was logical for the bathrooms to be placed in the middle of the park, and it was logical for the Senior League fields to face the middle of the park (the older kids could hit the ball over the fence), I don't think it was logical that the minor league field -- the one used by the youngest children with mothers of even younger children in the stands -- should face the middle of the park with their bleachers farthest from the only relief station. What sub-rated fifth grader is going to knock one out of the park?

It was commonplace to see a woman in an avocado-colored polyester jumpsuit with gaudy beads slapping around her neck and ruffling the bottom of a horrible helmet hairdo herding either a uniform-clad player or a younger child up the hill, panting, looking back towards the field, trying not to miss another of the in-the-park home runs (on errors) that occurred so often at this level of play. Usually the child she was lugging behind her stood out from the rest of the crowd because he or she resembled a human Mexican jumping bean, performing those contortionist movements known as "The Pee-Pee Dance" amidst onlookers ordered by Senorita Helmet Head to make way.

My brother had a game the afternoon I was released from Sharon General Hospital. I was ecstatic that I was out in the real world, finally able to run around and show everyone my sling; however, my delight was short-lived. I had been in traction for seven straight days. I was tired, slightly dehydrated, and a bit stoned (in other words, a sample version of my future college self).

I was quite the celebrity when we got to the ball field. Everyone asked me how I felt. The players all wanted to see my arm. I got hugs from some of the other moms. The game began, and we little kids went to the vine pit to play superheroes and SWAT. I should have stayed in the stands.

Around the third inning, I began to feel funny. We had just gotten done looking at my hospital bracelet, and I was in the process of telling Regina that she had boogers on her upper lip again (she had a constantly running nose) when my abdomen cramped ominously. I sat down on the edge of the pit and realized that I had to poop. For the first time in over ten days, I could do so sitting down, instead of lying on a bedpan with my huge black nurse helping me wipe my butt. I loved that nurse. But I loved the toilet even more.

"Wassamatter? You look funny." I looked up to see Teddy Steines, Regina's older brother, scrutinizing me while he pushed a battered pair of black-rimmed glasses further up the bridge of his nose. He gave me a strange glance and then tossed some more pebbles at me. He was a pain in the ass -- the spitting image of Cory Feldman in Stand By Me, only skinnier.

"My stomach hurts. I gotta' go the bathroom."

"You gonna' make it?"

"I think so, but I have to go now, or I'll never get there in time. I can't walk so fast."

I got up and began trekking towards the concession stand as best as I could; but as I focused on the side of the cement building, it seemed to get farther away the more steps I took. Heat rose from the gravel surrounded me. I began to sweat. Tunnel vision ensued. Indeed, it was crunch time, in more way than one.

"Rrrmmmbbbbbmmmggggg," went my lower intestine.

My butthole began to clench uncontrollably, and I swear my ass had almost swallowed it -- it was so far up in my body that I was afraid it was going to poke out the front. It was becoming harder to walk, but I couldn't stop. The trek seemed to go on forever. Goddamn it, my legs were so short!

Alas, I never had a chance. I was dead in the water. Halfway to the concession stand, I shit my pants.

Try as I might, I couldn't keep it in. A rather large log forced its way out of my butt into my underpants, stretching the waistband tight against my stomach. I remember it distinctly, including how my discomfort subsided while the weight in my shorts compounded, and that I stood still while it happened. No one could have walked through a shit like this. It was one of those "I will not be denied" shits.

A few people stopped and looked at me. "Does your arm hurt?" "Do you need your parents?" I said no, and that I was fine, although I had to do so through involuntary grunts. Accepting defeat seemed the logical thing to do. Hell, I was a full-grown woman of five, and the jig was up. So with my sling flapping at my side, I waddled back down the hill to the first base stands where mom was sitting with her friends. I plainly announced that I had pooped myself.

Pulling on her leg, I waited to be acknowledged. I couldn't believe she didn't smell it. She didn't look down the first time, so I yanked on it again. "What is it, honey?" she asked. She always called me little names. Still does.

"I had an accident." She blinked, not fully comprehending what I was trying to tell her.

"Did you hurt your arm?" She seemed peeved at this thought. (Gee, sorry to ruin your fun, there, Mom.) Her remark caused most of the parents sitting by her to turn their heads my way. Great. Now I knew this was the worst day of my life.

Apparently, I was going to have to turn this up a notch.

"I pooped my pants."

There. After all, this wasn't such a big deal to a recently released hospital prisoner. I had shit myself. So what? It's not like I could have wiped, anyway -- I had the reach of Barney the big purple dinosaur with the sling.

But under the surface of her failing smile, the look on her face as what I was saying sunk in betrayed a thousand deaths, each one horrible and unique in its own right. As my resolve faltered, I shrunk into my favorite (and now loaded) green shorts, the ones that matched the striped shirt with the round toggle pull at the top, and wondered if I had gone too far to actually feel okay about crapping myself, not to mention declaring it to the entire support group of the Virginia Road Minor League Twins.

She bitched the entire way home.

What the hell did she have to bitch about? I was the one who had to sit for ten minutes in a load of crap that was starting to dry to my butt. And I couldn't scratch. She just had to drive the car. I had to sit in it. Besides, who the hell told her to drag me to the game? Jesus!

Expressing her disappointment for missing Todd's at-bat, she bitched as she washed my underwear in the toilet of our blue guest bathroom, releasing an endless stream of semi-profanity about how my dad should be the one to clean this up for once. I remember watching my panties as she bitched, so little and now so brown, swirling around the stick she was using in the bowl of the toilet. My mother had morphed into Broom Hilda of the Porcelain Cauldron while I, Stinky Gremlin Poopypants, fidgeted at her side, feeling stupid but wondering at the same time what the hell the fuss was about. At least my ass was clean again.

Clutching the beige steering wheel of our Buick Century with knuckles white from rage, she bitched the entire way back to the field. In fact, she didn't stop bitching until we came within earshot of the bleachers, at which point she pulled her patented Adult Bullshit Recovery Smile technique, a move usually reserved for answering an ill-timed phone call just as she was finishing the downward swipe of her hand on my ass for whatever transgression I had just committed, whether accidentally saying "hell" or "goddammit" within earshot or forgetting to let the cat out to pee. My mother was Social Nicety Ninja Number One. An all around Cover-up Coolio.

When we returned home after Todd's game, she went to the bathroom and moved the cotton evidence to the laundry chute as if nothing had ever happened. (Pretending things into nonexistence happens to be a genetic trait.) I guess I was off the hook. My dad didn't mention the event, thank God, because had my brother found out, I would have never lived it down. Regardless, it was the last day I was a Shameless Shitter for a long, long time.

-- Daphne [1]