“Just Remember The Next Time A Dog Licks You That They Will Eat Anything.” Your 2022 Super Bowl Pooporoo!

So about five years ago, I was in NYC for business. My client was hosting about 30 of us industry types and though they had us staying in Manhattan our meeting the next day was actually upstate. So after a nice breakfast at the hotel, a few of us headed to a Starbucks across the street to get some coffee for the road while the interns fetched the rental cars from nearby garages.

While in line at Starbucks, the bubble guts hit me hard. I tell a colleague what's happening so I don't get left behind with no ride and trot off to the bathroom. This particular Starbucks had two one-person toilets and after waiting a couple minutes for one to open up, I head in.

Now, normally I would mess around with my phone while doing my business, but with colleagues waiting on me I wanted to be efficient. Not to mention it was 9:15 AM on a weekday in Manhattan and the joint was packed with people on their way to work, so I knew I had to clear out quickly. But the terror I was unleashing Would. Not. Stop.

Through the closed door I heard what sounded like a woman in her 60s screaming obscenities at me in a very stereotypical Noo Yawk accent while she was waiting for me to finish. I hurried and hurried and when my bowels finally gave the all clear and I'd wiped and washed, I sheepishly headed out and apologized with my customary Midwestern politeness, but it would not shut her up. She continued to hurl epithets my way as she shuffled past me to do her own business. I bowed my head, wondering how many strangers - or colleagues -- noticed, although knowing New York most fellow customers probably took it in stride. So I bought my latte with a slightly embarrassed shrug.Now, I grew up near a big city and still live in said city, and we can be very rude, and I am also used to rude New Yorkers (I've been there a bunch for work), but this old lady took the cake for swearing at a stranger. I still haven't seen anything like it. She'd make Dice Clay blush.

I'd like to say she had to follow me into the bombed-out bathroom and was stuck with my stink, since that would be poetic justice, but I don't recall which one she went in. Either way, I like to think this woman is still out there somewhere in the Tri-State Area, terrorizing visitors to the Big Apple who take 30 seconds too long in any given public restroom. Oh, and there's no doubt she voted for Trump.

Expected a fart and got quite a surprise.

I started a job new job at an office of only five people a few months ago. I am always the first one to come in by at least twenty minutes. I've used this opportunity to pencil in my morning dump. It’s peaceful and I can really obliterate the toilet without the risk of my co-workers knowing what I did.

This morning, I was barely keeping my cheeks together by the time I got to work. I absolutely annihilated this bathroom and needed a fistful of toilet paper to finish things off. Without thinking, I rolled the dice and threw the huge wad in with the dump and let it flush. Which it didn't. The water rose to about three inches from the top.

Now I’ve seen this happen before and usually another flush will free the toilet paper wad and do the trick. That isn't what happened this time. Water instantly began flooding over the bowl and soaking the bathroom, the only one in the office. I ran around in a frenzy, attempting to stop the bleeding with paper towels from the bathroom, then running into the kitchen to get entire rolls of paper towels, all while expecting someone to walk in at any second.

I eventually found a bunch of napkins in a kitchen cabinet and used all of them, furiously attempting to dry the floor. In my delirious panic, I stuck my hand in to the bowl to break up the toilet paper and even contemplated using my jacket to try and clean up the mess. Thankfully, no one came in during any of this.

I finally got the floor dry and disposed of the paper towels deep in the trash, taking old garbage from the bottom and putting it on the top to hide the evidence. The toilet bowl was still full and there was nothing I could do about it. So I went to my office and waited. When the first worker came in, I claimed I had walked into the bathroom and the bowl had already been filled. Maybe something was wrong with the plumbing? I knew this was a Hail Mary, but I was all in on the lie at this point.

To my great delight, she said this had happened before and would tell our boss. We waited a half hour for him to arrive and I was nervous. She had bought it, but would he? When he got there, he told all of us that his seven year old son had been with him late last night at the office while picking up some papers. Then he angrily goes "I've had to talk with him before about using too much toilet paper. He's going to be in hot water when I get home,"

I sat there and laughed. Then went back to my office. I know it was wrong to let a seven-year-old take the blame. But I did what I had to do to survive. 

I was walking my dog out on some wooded trails near my house where I can let her off leash to run around. About halfway through I felt an oncoming bowel movement. I thought I had plenty of time to make it home. Until I belched. The venting of gas in my GI tract must've upset some balance because I doubted I could make it another 200 yards, much less make it home.

Normally, taking a crap in the woods is no problem, but these trails are heavily used and there was no good place to do my business out of sight. Finding a tree about 10 yards off the trail I proceeded to defile mother nature with my diarrhea, all while keeping my head on a swivel to make sure no one saw me. I clean myself up with frozen leaves and a small batch of snow while my dog starts to sniff my semi-solid pile. I call her away and, seeing that I'm in the clear, go back to finishing my hike.

Coming up to a fork in the trail, I call to my dog to make sure she's following me. Turning around, I see her running from the area of my tree toilet, which is not a good sign. Before she even got to me, I noticed THE SMELL. And the stench is not coming from her coat or her tail or her paws but from her breath. She had wolfed down the whole thing.

Just remember the next time a dog licks you that they will eat anything.

This is the first time I've ever told this story.

My whole childhood I remember voluntarily returning cans for money (five cents each where we lived in the early 2000's). I had a bunch of siblings who drank soda and my dad liked beer so every couple weeks, the cans would turn into some serious cash.

This carried into my mid-teens when I started hosting house parties. If I felt flush with cash from the number of beers my dad drank, the number of Busch cans my friends consumed over a weekend made me feel like a damn Rockefeller. The only problem was, I had to dispose of the evidence first thing in the morning so my parents didn't see the damage. 

Cut to a beautiful Sunday morning in May at the town's small grocery store - the only place nearby with the automated can return machines. My friends and I had just finished a great night of drinking in my parents' garage. I've got seven or eight paper bags of aluminum cash that I'm shoving into the machines as fast as possible, since everyone in town is walking by me on their way into the store to do their weekly grocery shopping.

Suddenly, around bag three, it hits me. I've never before, and never since, felt the impending doom of beer-squirts like I did in that split second. Unable to move more than a foot or two, I accept the inevitability of my situation. I waddle between one machine and the wall, set a bag beneath me, drop my pants, and proceed to shit as neighbors walk right by. This was a very WASP-y town, so no one dared make eye contact with the lesser folk returning cans for money.

Somehow I was able to finish up without anyone making a scene. I immediately get receipts for the three bags of cans I deposited, said fuck it to the rest, and ran out of there.

Once I got home, I immediately convinced my younger brother how awesome returning cans was. He took over that responsibility and I never returned another can in my life.

As a young man in the early 'aughts I managed to land a long weekend layover in Singapore. Singapore, at least the part of it I saw, is like if high-end malls created a city-state. At that time of year the temperature outdoors is the boiling point of zinc, so I spent as much time as possible inside. I found myself at some bizarre touristy zoo/carnival thing featuring men with snakes and some of the worst carnival food I've ever seen. But I was hungry and so I ordered—in Singapore, melting pot of South Asia and home to some of the finest dining in the world—fish and chips. They were very bad but they were also expensive so I ate every last soggy bite. 

This would turn out to be a mistake.

Later that day I'm walking around when a bowling ball falls out of the sky and lands in my lower intestine. I have to shit. Right. Now. There's a nondescript office building closest to me, so I go for it. I figure that in a country that will cane you for spitting gum on the sidewalk, blasting ass on the ground would be similarly frowned upon. The entryway is just a hallway to an elevator, so I press the button and try to look like I'm the new guy they just hired to work at whatever the fuck place this is. 

On the second floor, the door opens and three people who actually DO belong there get in. They wisely decide not to ask questions of the trembling, sweaty guy they've just met. They hit the button for four and I go for three. There I walk out and it's just a hallway of presumably-locked doors with a single exit leading outside. I leave the building and see a beautiful, shiny movie theater right down the way. 

I sprint-waddle there and, fingers trembling, order up a seat at the fancy kiosk outside, thankful that I didn't have to attempt to communicate with another human being because all that I could manage at that point was whimpering. I still haven't seen Monsters, Inc. but goddamn do I remember the ruination I delivered unto one of the nicest shitters it has ever been my pleasure to pour my entire soul into.

I have not eaten fish and chips since. 

Right out of college, one of my friends and I were working a summer job together refinishing vintage furniture. We worked for a guy who was running his own business at home out of his garage. After a long morning of sanding and staining, my friend and I decided it was time to break and get some lunch. The guy’s house was in a part of town that had a spot for a burrito. We settled for the greasiest, cheesiest burritos we could find to satiate the hunger that only comes from hours of tedious manual labor. They were delicious, but the only kicker was the aftermath.

To this day I am still in awe of how fast it hit me, but once we finished our meals, that burrito grabbed the damn reins and raced for the finish line. Without warning, the food went through me like a bat outta hell, and I kid you not, I sharted IN the parking lot. Right then and there, 15 feet past the restaurant door, having not even made it to my car yet.

Stunned at what had just happened, I rushed back inside and stood there at the front counter, pants full of poo, and shamefully asked the kind employee for the key to use the outdoor bathroom. I cleaned myself up as my friend waited at the car in a fit of laughter. Fortunately it was somehow cleaner than expected and a half roll of TP later, my underwear was salvageable and I was on my way back to work. 

Now begins phase two. My friend and I are back at work and mere minutes after we have arrived and stopped laughing about my accident, he feels the same unforgiving stomach rumblings that can only mean one thing. The real twist in this tale is our boss, who was out running errands at the time and was incredibly anal about the security of his house and possessions. As a result, he had locked all of the doors to his house, leaving us out in the garage on our own.

Realizing there wasn’t a bathroom in sight, my friend began pacing through the backyard with panicked clenching, while verbally attempting to rationalize his situation and console himself. He was wearing the tortured expression of a man who ultimately knew his fate. Then suddenly his face went still and emotionless. The deed was done. "We need to go," he said calmly, as we hopped in the car and drove to the nearest bathroom (McDonald's) so that he could ditch his fully loaded underwear in the bathroom garbage can, cleanse the aftermath, and attempt to restore some sense of dignity. We could not believe what had just happened. Two, fully grown, male adults who had both just shit themselves within 20 minutes of each other.

I called my roommate to explain the utter chaos that had just occurred on that hot summer day. He got an extra good laugh out of it and we hung up before continuing on with our respective days. Not 10 minutes later I got a text from him that read, "You will NOT believe this. I just accidentally dumped myself on the couch trying to push out a fart. I had to hop in the shower immediately and throw away my underwear."

Make that THREE grown men shitting themselves in one day. The trifecta was complete. We all died a little inside that afternoon, but we still look back and laugh about it to this day.

Back in first year university (I’m Canadian and that’s what we call college) I was living in a residence with a mixed-gender bathroom that was shared by the entire floor of first year students. As a first-year frosh out of my parents basement, my lifestyle was in constant flux as I (poorly) adjusted to my newfound freedom. It was a chilly Nova Scotian day in October and I had just spent the better part of the week marathoning Call of Duty and crushing bologna sandwiches from my mini-fridge when there was a fateful rumble in my tummy. It occurred to me that due to my laser like focus on video games and poor dietary choices, I had not emptied my bowels in the better part of a week.

So I made my way to the bathroom and unleashed what is still the largest dump of my life by an extremely large margin. I looked down, said ‘well that’s not going to flush’ and happily resumed squandering my tuition money on pot and video games. A few hours later I hear a commotion in the hallway outside my room and emerge to see a good 20+ people outside the bathroom having a grand old time. There’s beer, there’s laughter, so obviously I mosey on over to see what all the fuss is about.

One of my friends comes up to me and is like, Dude you gotta go into the last stall. Someone dropped the biggest deuce I’ve seen in my entire life.” I try my best to control my shit-eating grin and feign surprise as I am directed to look at my now locally famous dump. I spent the rest of the afternoon basically playing ‘Among Us’ in real life but with poop instead of murder. Many accusations were hurled, but none at me. I felt like the sneakiest boy in the game. Good Times.

In 2003 I had a pilonidal cyst turn into a pilonidal abscess (don't look this stuff up on an empty stomach). After getting a friend to take me to the ER, the doc tried to drain it and put a wick in. He shot me up full of fun stuff and gave me some painkillers to go because the pain was intense. He told me to go to my regular doc in three days to have the wick removed. I go to my GP, he tries to pull the wick and I SCREAM, scaring the shit out of people in the waiting room. He immediately called a surgeon buddy and I was booked for next-day emergency surgery. 

I woke up in the hospital the morning after surgery hooked up to some pretty powerful antibiotics. I needed to pee so the nurse came and unhooked me. The first thing I notice when I go to pop a squat is that there's a ton of padding between my ass cheeks. I do my business, flush that and don't think too much about it.

The surgeon came in on his rounds to tell me how things went. He was absolutely cute as a button and just a really nice guy. He tells me, after giving me the rundown on the surgery, "You pooped." I wanted to die. Here's this adorable man telling me that I shit myself on an operating table. I guess I was finally relaxed enough to go. 

I'm sure it's a pretty common occurrence in ORs, but I have yet to top the absolute mortification of being a youngish woman being told by her cute doc that she shit herself with an audience present.

P.S.--the abscess was the size of a golf ball.

Growing up in Hamilton, Canada (one hour from Niagara Falls), I tried to get to at least one Bills home game a year. Over Christmas break in December 2011, back home for two weeks from law school, the Bills were playing a still-hyped Tim Tebow led Broncos team on Christmas Eve.

Despite being booked for a trip to the Caribbean with my girlfriend’s (now wife’s) entire extended family departing at 6AM Christmas Day, an old university friend and I decided to squeeze in what was clearly going to be our only opportunity to see the legend of Tebow. 

We left Hamilton around 7AM to make the trek across the border, loading up on McDonalds breakfast and a lot of black coffee en route. We hit Wegmans across the border for the requisite wings, subs, and beer run. We wandered around the tailgate, eating and drinking as much as we could before making our way to the stadium. I stopped drinking during the game, opting instead for more coffee to warm up and sober up for the drive back.

The game was everything we could have hoped for; a tight game that was blown open in the fourth quarter as Tebow threw consecutive pick-6s, leading to a 40-14 Bills win. 

I’ve seen the toilets at the end of a game at the Ralph. So as we left the stadium, despite my stomach’s rumbling advice, we opted to head straight for the car to begin the long, traffic-filled drive back over the border to Canada plus another two hours to my mother-in-law’s house in Toronto for a few hours sleep before heading to the airport. I dropped my friend off and arrived at the house around 10PM.

Now, I should mention that my mother-in-law had just moved from her longtime home into a brand-new house earlier that week. Everything but the essentials was still boxed up. I made my way to the upstairs guest bedroom toilet and a day’s worth of fast food, coffee, and tailgating shoots out of me. A few minutes in I go for the first courtesy flush. No luck. The sheer volume of poop in the bowl barely even moves, and the water just builds up. I sense that I am only about halfway there, so as I continue to poop in the now clearly clogged toilet, I text my wife simply “Uh oh. Plunger ASAP. There’s nothing up here.”

From outside the door, my wife says “I checked all the bathrooms and can’t find anything.” Keep in mind, it’s now after 11PM on Christmas Eve. My mother-in-law hasn’t met a single one of her new neighbours yet. She almost certainly doesn’t want me introducing her to the neighbourhood by waking them at midnight on Christmas Eve begging to borrow a plunger. We’re leaving for the airport at 4am, so no way is she letting this monstrosity sit in her new guestroom toilet for a week.

I head to the car and pray that somewhere that sells plungers is still open. The roads are deserted. After checking Wal-Mart (closed) and the 24-hour pharmacy (no plungers), I pull into a gas station. It is now after midnight as I head to the gas station bathroom. I see a plunger next to the toilet and make my way to the counter. I offer the attendant whatever amount he wants to buy this filthy plunger, but he says he cannot sell it. Please trust me when I say there are few more shameful situations than begging the graveyard shift gas station clerk for their used plunger.

Eventually, I convince him to let me take the plunger, but only in exchange for leaving my ID and credit card with him to guarantee I will bring it back. After carefully placing it in the trunk, I head back to the house and quickly clear the clog. I throw the wet plunger back into the trunk and return to the gas station. I couldn’t bring myself to make eye contact with the attendant.

Ten years later, this still comes at pretty much every family gathering. And yes, I blame Tebow.