Adventures in Defecation

Many office-dwellers suffer from the uncomfortable intersection of bodily urges and scheduling urges, which result in the “endless meeting”. Now meetings usually do go on for long periods of time with no real purpose or end in sight, but they are made truly endless when you have go #1 or #2. It’s as though some subconscious switch is thrown in everyone else there, and they take twice as long to discuss the matter at hand than they would otherwise. In depth discussions are green-lighted; nothing is taken off-line.

Meanwhile, your ability to contribute to the meeting decreases second by second. All of your effort is going toward containing that bodily waste so it doesn’t spill out everywhere. That means the blood goes down to those muscles and away from your brain. So you’re left with the super-intelligent responses of nodding your head, agreeing with single-syllable words, and muttering stock phrases such as, “I’ll do it” and “I’ll take that as an action item.”

With most meetings, you can’t leave because you’ll miss something and you’ll get the “you’re so unprofessional” look. So you have no choice. You have to as they say, “play in pain”, sitting, fidgeting, tensing, and wondering why the time seems to be running in molasses.

Sometimes too much spicy food is too much of a good thing. After a while of not eating anything remotely hot, I had pizza with red peppers and then a spicy chicken sandwich from Wendy’s. Everything was fine until 2 AM, at which time I woke up with an upset stomach that no amount of water, crackers, or Tums could make go away. Finally, I got tired again and then crashed. I was ok again until noon of that day. That was when the hot stuff decided to leave my body and punish me for eating it.

I took one dump, then another, and then another. The heat made my buttlips numb, but it was that kind of burning numb that you get on your upstairs lips when you’ve eaten something too spicy. For thirty minutes, I couldn’t sit down without it hurting. I was sweating and afraid that I would have to take another dump at any moment.

Words of wisdom? If you haven’t eaten spicy in a while, go slowly and build up your tolerance. If you don’t, your body will strike back!