Adventures in Defecation

I’ve been trying to lose weight recently, and that has bred a fixation with weighing myself on the bathroom scale. I got back from a trip and just for grins, weighed myself. I sighed, took a dump, and then for even more grins, weighed myself again. Then I blinked.

I had lost a pound just by pooping.

That’s when it hit me: the best new advertising tag line in the last four years! “More Poo — Thinner You!” The ad campaign would feature celebrities looking fit and trim, and then scenes of them grasping the toilet bowl for dear life as they pooped out tons of bizarre-looking fecal material. You could show this chick entering the bathroom, slamming the door, then weighing herself a few times in a row, each time with the scale a little lower than before. Then her smiling face would look up at you as the scale reached some magic number.

You’re going to think that I’m making this one up. Seriously.

Here I was, doing my business and I couldn’t help but be embarrassed for the guy in the next stall over. He was gasping for breath in his struggle to push out his poo. Then he was fighting with the tp dispenser, trying to get enough tp to cleanse his crack. He must have sent the thing spinning four different times. (And everyone knows that when the roll spins, it generates beaucoup tp.) On top of it all, he was a sandpaperist! So while he’s still trying to get his breath back, he stands up and flushes, sandpapers some more, and then flushes again. The man had so much poop, he had to flush the bowl twice! He gathers his pants together and the next sound is him washing his hands. The last thing I hear before he leaves the bathroom is him trying to catch his breath.

This guy had violated nearly every rule of bathroom etiquette. I felt so embarrassed for him.