Back in my younger days I used to race motocross. Anyone who rides in the great state of New Jersey knows that it's pretty much illegal to ride just about anywhere but your own backyard. And even there it's probably illegal. Still, along with a few welcome friends of mine, I would nevertheless venture out to our favorite illegal riding spot and ride for the entire weekend. Being that it was an illegal spot, there were no civilized people of any kind. No bathrooms of any kind. In fact, there wasn't anything at all except dirt, jumps, and sand. Anyone from southern New Jersey will know the place. We called it Sarco.

On this particular weekend I decided to take out my race bike and show my good riding buddies what real motocross is all about. Not to toot my own horn, but I am a pretty damn good rider. I've never raced in the professional class, but I am still a pretty accomplished rider. That being said, I tend to be a bit of a hot dog sometimes. I'm never one to shy away from a big jump or hill. In fact, I always welcomed it. Up until this fateful day.

The plan was to ride all day Saturday, camp for the night, and then ride all day Sunday. All seemed well. We rolled into our spot at about nine AM on Saturday morning. We gassed up the bikes, ate a Cliff Bar, and headed out into the great abyss. I was riding pretty conservative to start -- I had never had my race bike off a real track, so I was taking it easy to get the feel for it. And then I spotted it: the big daddy of big daddy jumps. This is the type of jump that makes you weak in the knees. I've hit some big jumps in my day, but nothing as big as this. If anyone out there has seen the Seth Enslow dune jump, then you get the idea of what I'm talking about.

There were a couple of pro guys out there hitting this big MFer. As I was watching them, I felt that sick, queasy feeling in my stomach. You know the feeling: it's the one you got when you were sixteen and the girl you really, really liked just said "hi" and touched your knee. Yeah, it was THAT kind of feeling.

My fellow dumbass riding buddies were the first to speak up.

"You can hit that thing, it ain't that big. Don't be a pussy."

"Bro, you've hit bigger jumps then that. Hit that shit and show them what's up."

"Stop being a sally and hit that jump. Fucken pansy."

Great friends I have. I watched the pro guys hit the jump for a good thirty minutes. I'm not sure if it was the heckling from my friends or the sheer magnitude of the jump that made my decision: "Fuck it. I can hit that jump. No problem."

As they say, hindsight it 20/20. My first mistake was NOT asking the pro guys what gear they were hitting the jump in. From my vantage point it looked like they were hitting it in fifth or sixth gear wide open. Turns out it was only third gear. This would be my demise.

The pro guys saw me roll up and gave me some room to hit the jump.

"You sure you can hit this big boy? This is a 200+ foot gap there, kid."

"You see these numbers on my bike? They mean I can ride."

"OK, tough guy, it's all you."

Like I said, I was young, stupid, and just plain not thinking straight. I cruised back about four hundred yards and whacked the gas. I was cruising into the jump at a good fifty or sixty m.p.h. I hit the takeoff and all seemed well.

I remember was thinking to myself, "Holy shit, I'm gonna land this!!"

And then I realized I had gone into the jump WAY too hot.

Last thing I remember was being in the air. Then I woke up in the hospital.

OK, enough of the background -- this is indeed a poop report. A broken femur, two broken collarbones, and a broken pelvis were my rewards for this stupid endeavor. Yes, you heard right -- a broken pelvis. Since I went into the jump way too fast, I overshot the landing by a good fifty feet. In doing this, I landed on flat ground. Which means, essentially, I fell about sixty feet right out of the air. The bike literally crumpled beneath me. As I landed, I snapped off one peg; and there came the broken femur. Both shoulders snapped forward and hit the bars, resulting in the two broken collarbones. And then I was catapulted off the bike, resulting in the broken pelvis. My friends actually have video tape of this entire debauchery. All you hear is, "Oh shit, he's up... He's gonna... Oh fuck, he missed the landing! OH SHIT HE'S FUCKEN DEAD!!"

So. There I lay in the hospital for the next ten days. They were pumping me full of all kinds of strange drugs. Every day I was poked, prodded, and injected. Throughout the first week, I couldn't shit; nor did I want to. If anyone out there has ever broken their pelvis, they can attest to the shear PAIN. It hurts to even breathe. Shitting like a normal human being isn't an option. Besides the fact that I couldn't even move my arms or my left leg, I couldn't even sit up.

They had kept me pretty heavily sedated for the early part of my recoup, saying my body needed to mend itself. Whatever -- they were giving me great drugs, so I didn't care. But these drugs were binding me up something fierce. After a week, my studious doctor decided that he needed to check my feces for blood. They wanted to make sure I didn't puncture or tear anything with my broken pelvis. I thought all this had already been taken care of. Little did I know what I was about to endure.

It was about nine AM on the sixth day when my wench of a nurse rolled in to ruin my day before it even began. Nurse Gertrude (I swear that was her name) was about as close to a man as a woman could be. She had facial hair, a very deep voice, big man hands, and was as scary as the original Exorcist. When Nurse Gertrude said you had to do something, no amount of crying or carrying on would stop said action from taking place. Either you went along with her willingly or you were in for some pain. Since I was pretty much in lala land, I did whatever she said -- whatever she said, that is, until she uttered the word "enema." I had never had an enema in my life and I wasn't all too keen on breaking that streak right now.

"I don't care if you don't want one," she told me. "Either you roll over and let me stick this tube up your toot toot" -- (yes, she called my dirthole "toot toot") -- "or I flip you and your broken pelvis over myself." Hearing that made me realize that fighting Nurse Gertrude was a losing battle. So I reluctantly rolled my crippled self over and prayed for almighty God to kill me.

The initial feelings of pressure were pretty strange. Uncomfortable, but bearable.

"OK. Now try to hold in the fluid as long as you can. It needs to sit up there for a few."

Then the pressure went from uncomfortable to ungodly. "Get it out!! GET IT OUT!!"

"Stop being a baby. It will be over in a minute."

"Fuck you, Gertrude! Get the fucken tube out of my ass!"

"Or what? You're going to take it out yourself?"

She had a point. I couldn't move my arms enough to scratch my belly button, let alone pull a tube out of my ass. So, that being the case, I sat there sullenly and whimpered to myself.

Then I devised a plan. I figured I might as well just let it all out on her. Not like she could hit me. Worst thing she could do was make my next couple of days there a little rougher. She was only the day nurse, anyway. (My night nurse was a GODDESS, to say the least; and she was nice to me, too. She said she had a soft spot for tattooed guys.)

So I did just that. I just let it all go. Right on Nurse Gertrude.

"OK, just another -- OH! What are you doing! No, hold it in!! HOLD IT IN!!"

And then, as I shat everything that I had ever eaten in my entire life, I started laughing to myself. "Fuck you, you evil bitch!!" I thought. "Take that!" And with that I unleashed a barrage of enematic farts.

Nurse Gertrude was not impressed with my kingly flatulence. "Oh, so it's like that. You're just going to go and be like that to me. OK, remember who has to take care of you for the next five days!"

But I didn't care. I was tired of being treated like a child. It was time to take a stand! I'd let my toot toot do the talking for me.

Actually, the next five days were bearable. Nurse Gertrude didn't as much as say a word to me. She would come in with my meds, take some blood and such, and leave. On the tenth day of my stay, the doctors decided that I was well enough to go home. So home I went, broken bones and all.

Over the next six months I would endure what I hope is the most pain I will ever have to deal with in my life. You don't realize how much you take for granted until you're borderline crippled. I couldn't so much as take a piss without the help of my family. Taking a shit, to put it mildly, was an ordeal. My mother, God bless her soul, was there for me through everything. Changing the diaper of your infant child is one thing, but helping your twenty-year-old son unbutton his shorts, pulling them down for him, and then helping him get on the crapper is another.

The first few dumps were the absolute worst. I would have to sit on the bowl with my one leg totally straight, both arms pinned to my hips, leaning to one side because of the broken pelvis. Even if I had been healthy this would have been uncomfortable. Think about it with four broken bones. After I was done pinching a loaf, my mother would come in to clean me up as best she could. How totally humiliating -- a grown man (well, almost) having his mommy wipe his toot toot.

And this is how it went for the first few months. Taking a dump was a sheer nightmare. The pain was to the point that I would literally cry while on the bowl. I would go five or six days between dumps just because I didn't want to deal with the pain and humiliation of it.

It's amazing how much you take for granted when you're healthy. Because when you're not, the littlest things are the toughest. Sitting on the bowl, leaning to one side since my pelvis was still broken, was utterly unimaginable. We humans sometimes think we're immortal. You watch your buddies get fucked up in car wrecks or other accidents and you say to yourself, "That will never happen to me." But then it does. It changes your life instantly. It makes you realize how truly gifted you are to have what you have.

So next time you're sitting on the crapper, reading your copy of Maxim, think about all those who are less fortunate then you. There are plenty of people who can't wipe their own ass. I was one of them.