My Shitty

Earlier tonight, I shit my pants. I was on a run. I felt those familiar pangs and pressure building around my brown exit and knew that I was in trouble, because I was about two miles away from home.

Usually if I think I’m about to shit myself I will stop and pretend I am tinkering with my watch, but tonight there was nowhere near enough watch tinkering in the world; those pangs just wouldn’t quit. And even though I squeezed in my ass checks together as much as humanly possible, that nasty shit just kept coming. Finally, the leaders of the pack broke free and headed for the elastic finish line.

I was able to hold the rest of the pack in for a while, but I also knew that what had come out was paddy-caked to my ass. This was not good, because I’ll be running a half marathon this weekend. I wasn’t so much worried about the humiliation of shitting myself – I just didn’t want to incur any chaffing on my butt hole from walking two miles with a large pile of crap in my shorts, squishing this way and that.

Anyhow, I was on a residential street with no street lights when this happened. I didn’t want to seem like a peeping tom, stopping at every other house to play with my watch, so finally I had to let loose.

Thankfully, the lining in my shorts kept most of it in place.

It was nightfall, thank God, because I knew there was a noticeably large lump hanging from the back of my ass. I even contemplated reaching back in my shorts, grabbing the shit, and then tossing it into some bushes because of this, but I didn’t want to make a mess of myself than I already had. Therefore my only choice was to get home without being detected, to choose the least visible route.

I calculated my street crossings very carefully so as to avoid any cars stopped at red lights that might see what I was carrying, and I dodged this way and that, painfully aware of my brown passenger. Finally, I arrived home. After I went inside, I took off my shoes and just walked straight into the shower, because I’ve been through this before. I know that trying to take off my shorts would cause even more of a mess, so the best thing to do is to be in a strategic place when that happens. Getting into the shower afterward is the worst part, though, especially if my shit is rough and has torn up my sensitive ass skin. This time was no different.

That I might crap my pants is one of the risks I take as a distance runner. It just goes with the territory.

Poop Report

Earlier tonight, I shit my pants. I was on a run. I felt those familiar pangs and pressure building around my brown exit and knew that I was in trouble, because I was about two miles away from home.

Usually if I think I’m about to shit myself I will stop and pretend I am tinkering with my watch, but tonight there was nowhere near enough watch tinkering in the world; those pangs just wouldn’t quit. And even though I squeezed in my ass checks together as much as humanly possible, that nasty shit just kept coming. Finally, the leaders of the pack broke free and headed for the elastic finish line.

I was able to hold the rest of the pack in for a while, but I also knew that what had come out was paddy-caked to my ass. This was not good, because I’ll be running a half marathon this weekend. I wasn’t so much worried about the humiliation of shitting myself – I just didn’t want to incur any chaffing on my butt hole from walking two miles with a large pile of crap in my shorts, squishing this way and that.

Anyhow, I was on a residential street with no street lights when this happened. I didn’t want to seem like a peeping tom, stopping at every other house to play with my watch, so finally I had to let loose.

Thankfully, the lining in my shorts kept most of it in place.

It was nightfall, thank God, because I knew there was a noticeably large lump hanging from the back of my ass. I even contemplated reaching back in my shorts, grabbing the shit, and then tossing it into some bushes because of this, but I didn’t want to make a mess of myself than I already had. Therefore my only choice was to get home without being detected, to choose the least visible route.

I calculated my street crossings very carefully so as to avoid any cars stopped at red lights that might see what I was carrying, and I dodged this way and that, painfully aware of my brown passenger. Finally, I arrived home. After I went inside, I took off my shoes and just walked straight into the shower, because I’ve been through this before. I know that trying to take off my shorts would cause even more of a mess, so the best thing to do is to be in a strategic place when that happens. Getting into the shower afterward is the worst part, though, especially if my shit is rough and has torn up my sensitive ass skin. This time was no different.

That I might crap my pants is one of the risks I take as a distance runner. It just goes with the territory.

Poop Report

t was a hot summer day in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1996, and I took a day off work to enjoy some recreation. The day’s activity was what we called “Tubing down the Salt”, which is local slang for driving an hour or so out of town to a spot where you can rent an inner tube from an old truck tire, get in the Salt River, and leisurely float downstream for a few hours. There are marked points along the river where you can get out and take a shuttle bus either back to your car at the tube rental site, or back upstream to have another float.

My (now ex) wife and my brother were my companions for the day – a day which started off uneventfully. We had our tubes and were in the river by ten A.M. About an hour into the float I felt like I had to fart, but I suspected that – as had been the norm lately – I would be unable to fart without expelling a few tablespoons of liquid. This really irritated me because I love a good fart, but squirting totally ruins the otherwise joyful experience. (Well, it’s not so much the squirting itself as it is the fact that you will stink terribly and be uncomfortable until you change pants.)

For months I had been forced to fart carefully, so that I could cut it off if I detected any liquid or to just sit on the toilet every time I felt a fart coming on. Since we were hours from reaching anything resembling a toilet, I knew I was going to have to do something else if I didn’t want to hold in this suspicious fart/turd mixture, which I most certainly did not; it was uncomfortable, and it would rob me of most of the enjoyment I was supposed to be experiencing.

I decided that it was not worth getting out of the river and walking into the bushes. I would simply pull my swim trunks down to mid-thigh, fart, and then fan any turdicles away from myself, and clean up with my hands if necessary. I didn’t figure it would be that bad, and I could stop and scrub my hands in the sandy river bottom if needed. I knew I’d have a chance to wash my hands with antibacterial soap before I had to eat, drink, or do anything where cleanliness mattered.

So, I prepared. I was sitting in the inner tube, with my butt hanging down through the hole in the middle. My legs were hanging over one end of the tube, and my arms were draped over the sides of it, just like everyone else on the river. Unlike everyone else, however, I had lowered my swim suit to mid-thigh level, so that any liquid expulsions would not be trapped within, but free to travel away from me. My wife was a good fifty feet ahead of me, and my brother at least that far behind me, with no one else in sight. Even if someone had been right next to me, they wouldn’t really have been able to see anything out of the ordinary. The inner tubes are just big, and anything suspicious looking was below the water line.

So, free from worry about trapping butt-fluid in my suit, I farted as hard as I could, which was pretty hard. I remember feeling a sort of concussive blast from the force, and that also some liquid escaped. I then moved my right hand to my butt to wave away any turdicles that might have been lingering. As my hand reached my butt, I saw a stream of bubbles surface behind me, followed swiftly by a full-sized turd. There was a small amount of turd liquid visible around it too, and the leading edge of it looked really mushy, but the turd itself was quite cohesive, and it was buoyant as well.

Although I was quite surprised to have so grossly misjudged the contents of my intestines, I was not terribly alarmed. Things seemed to be going better than I would have guessed that they could have. Somehow, almost one hundred percent of the poop was several feet away from me. Additionally, there was no hint of the oil slick that was I used to almost always experience after pooping. I guess it must have been my diet at the time, but almost every time I pooped while in my twenties, it seemed that my butt experienced an event roughly as messy as the Exxon Valdez oil spill. I’d spend what would seem like hours wiping, leaving my butt somehow simultaneously sore and still greasy. Most of the time, I felt like wiping; my butt was almost as futile of an endeavor as those volunteers who went out with a bottle of Dawn dish soap to try to clean off the oil-soaked otters and birds that littered the beach of Alaska. This time, however, there was almost nothing to clean. A quick feel of my butt revealed no mess –no oily feeling, no brown mark on my hand, no nothing. All the mess was a few feet away from me, and I was free to paddle away from it.

So, I set about the task of putting some distance between me and the log. I paddled downstream and to one side of it, so that if I slowed down, I would be able to let it pass me without it coming within twenty feet of me. There was a fork in the river up ahead, and I yelled ahead to my wife that we should take the right fork. I did this because I knew with certainty that the turd was going to be swept into the left fork, although I did not tell her the reason for my choice of direction. She started paddling toward the right fork. At that time my brother, who was behind me, started paddling to catch up to us. After a short while, I realized he’d probably bump into my turd if I didn’t warn him, so I did. I casually called out to him, “Hey, watch out for the turd in the river.” I assumed he’d just say, “Thanks for the heads up,” and paddle around it. I was wrong. Apparently I didn’t realize how unusual seeing a turd in the river would be to my brother. He didn’t immediately swerve to avoid it, as he didn’t believe me.

He kept paddling and said, “Turd?? It must just be a stick or something. How do you know it’s a turd?” How did I know that it was a turd? Hmmmm. I didn’t answer the question. I didn’t really have time to. My brother is a smart guy. He wondered how I knew that the indistinct brown object thirty feet away from him was a turd. It didn’t take him long to figure out the most likely explanation for my knowledge. I knew it was a turd because I was personally responsible for its presence. He turned to face me again, and he looked at me with the most expressive face I have ever seen on a human being, ever. His face registered shock, horror, and laughter all at once. He was trying to puke, laugh, and yell at me all at the same time, while furiously paddling away from my turd.

I knew at this point that there was no keeping it secret from the wife. She had to find out why my brother was laughing and yelling ‘Ewwww!’ at the top of his lungs. And he was only too happy to tell her. She wouldn’t have thought there was any humor in the situation even if she wasn’t in the river. Since she actually was in the river, she was so mad she almost divorced me early. She figured that pooping in the river 100 feet away from where she was equaled pooping directly into her mouth, and she needed to be sure I understood that fact. Oh well, it was worth it.

Poop Report

I’ve read stories on Poopreport from runners who get stuck outside and have to poop in someone’s bushes or yard because they are so far from home. Sometimes runners are too far from fast food restaurants or gas stations, too. I try to run in urban places for safety. I also run in urban places for closer reach of bathrooms, because once I messed up big time.

To start, I am not a marathon runner, and I don’t run very fast. If you see me running you will see one of those people who kind of scoots and huffs and puffs. I run to stay in shape, and I think I look pretty bad doing it. I guess you could say I already look like I’ve pooped in my pants.

Three years ago I was running in October, and it was a cold October. I was wearing running tights that had lost some of their elasticity. They still stayed up, but they had room in them. I had shorts over the tights. I chose to run in a housing development and was two miles from home when the urge to poop struck me. “Oh, crap,” I said out loud. “This is not good.” I turned around right there and began to make my way back home, hoping I’d get in the bathroom before it was too late. Well, that did not happen. I made it over a mile and then I had to stop running and clench my butt cheeks. There was no hope. There was no way I was going to hold off. So, I started running again, and a soft poop escaped.

The problem was not the poop, though. It was the friendly German Shepherd dog that lived at the top of our road. Our road, by the way, is the last half mile of my run.

Eyrie, as he is known to all the kids on the street, is the best dog I have ever had the pleasure of spending time with. He does tricks, never bites, is friendly with other dogs, and he adores kids. He has a knack for knowing who strangers are. He’s the kind of dog that I don’t mind being off the leash and running free, because he’s so nice. And no one is going to kidnap him because he weighs close to 100 pounds. He’s just huge.

However, when I made the turn at the top of the road, I was not ready for Eyrie to take such an interest in what had filled my tights. He ran up to me, like he does every day, and I said hi to him, like I do every day. I thought that would be that. It wasn’t. As he loped alongside me he nudged my leg with his nose. The nudging turned into bumping, and then he he kind of got in front of me and shoved his nose into my crotch.

“Stop it, Eyrie. No, Eyrie,” I tried to command him, but it was no use. Eyrie was having the time of life with my poop smell.

So, there I was, a regular, quiet, stay-at-home house mom trying to seem normal as I shoved a giant dog off my crotch and butt the entire way up the road.

Eyrie doesn’t wander far from his yard, and after a quarter of a mile he gave up and went back home. I crept into the house defeated and took a bath.

The story does not end here. Later that winter at a neighbor’s Christmas party one of my friend’s husbands approached me during a time when no one else was standing around and told me that he’d seen the entire episode. He asked me if Eyrie had attacked me. Not wanting to damage Eyrie’s perfect reputation — especially because the children love him so much — I had to come clean with what had really happened. He laughed so hard that other people wanted to know what up. I am lucky that he is such a good person, because he refused to tell. Every once in awhile I run by and he waves if he’s out in the yard, and we crack up, every single time.

Darned Eyrie.

Poop Report

Let me begin this story with some background. I was 23 years old at the
time of the incident. I have had previous bouts with IBS and marathon
pooping was not unknown to me. In the prior months leading up to the incident I had broken up with a boyfriend and moved back in with my parents. Feeling good about myself, I was going to the gym and eating right, and the diet seemed to make my IBS disappear. Or so I thought…

One unassuming Tuesday evening I went to the gym after work, as per my usual routine. I was in wonderful shape and loved how I looked. While doing floor exercises I saw a friend of mine, and we decided to go eat some dinner after we were through. I let her pick the restaurant — my first mistake.

We car-pooled — my second mistake — to the neighborhood Red Lobster. I took it somewhat easy on the meal, ordering some grilled shrimp. She ordered the king crab, however, and insisted I try some. My IBS nightmares far from my mind, I ate a leg or two of her king crab with butter sauce. As we finished up the meal, she wanted to chat, but I felt the rumble down under, which brought back my memories of long, painful trips to various bathrooms. This being so, I suggested we head back, as I needed to get home. While she talked about who knows what, all I could think about was that I needed to get to a restroom pronto or the situation was going to turn ugly. Since we had taken my car and left hers at the gym, I did not want my friend sitting in a restaurant all by herself waiting for me to empty my colon.

The minutes turned into half of an hour of more conversation as I politely tried to scoot her towards the door. The thunder had not yet reached the point of exit, so I estimated I could wait at least 30 minutes before the brunette unload. I drove her to her car, said good night, and headed towards home, figuring I could make the drive in a reasonable ten minutes.

Unfortunately, the stomach craps were telling me that my loaded bowel was not going to wait that long. so at the next red light, sweating and red faced, I emptied out my gym bag of the dirty gym clothes I had worn and tucked them between by butt and my leather seats. In my brown clouded reasoning, I would rather buy a new gym bag than have to clean poop out of my car. As luck would have it, I was wearing a rather short, black skirt, so I had no barrier except my underwear while sitting. Still waiting for the light to turn, I thought it would be a good idea to light up a cigarette to take my mind off of the situation.

For those of you unfamiliar with the cigarette-to-poop ratio, let me just say this was the absolute worst decision of my night so far. It is a rare day when a smoker gets constipated. Doubling the stomach cramps and cutting my safe time in half, I ended up driving 80 miles per hour in a 45 zone trying to make it to my parent’s house. I was mentally telling myself I could make it. I saw the neighborhood entrance. Then I saw the driveway. I was home free! I parked my car crookedly in the drive and ran to the garage door security pad. I enter the four-digit code and up the door went. Watching it was torture, because I realized I wasn’t going to make it. The door had only reached calf height when I had to make an executive decision: Do I poop-trail my way through my parent’s house to the bathroom, or do I shit in the front yard?

I took a few steps out from the garage door, and aiming my starfish at the front bushes, allowed the projectile ass vomit to begin. Thankfully I had enough foresight to lift my skirt, pull down my underwear, and take aim.

After a few agonizing minutes, I realized my parent’s front porch light was on, illuminating my dirty deed to any neighbors who might have cared to look. My chute not fully empty, I pinched off, quickly pulled up my underwear while unwiped, and walked inside. Both of my parents were in the living room watching TV. I made a dead run to the bathroom. Luckily, I had my phone with me. After fully evacuating the offending seafood, I texted my mother the infamous message:

Can you please go to my room and bring me some underwear and shorts?

I heard my mom’s phone receive the text from the neighboring room and then my parents murmuring to each other. A knock at the door announced the arrival of my fresh clothes.

Embarrassingly, after cleaning up, I had to emerge from the safe haven of the bathroom. Both of my parents expected an explanation; they witnessed some strange things tonight, so I quickly recounted the events with as little detail as possible. Finally my father asked me, “Where?”

Having to admit that I sprayed the front bushes right outside the front door was almost worst than committing the act itself. My dad sent me out front with a shovel and a hose (as he didn’t want to inquire about the consistency) and requested that I make sure that we would not see or smell anything by morning. With my stomach contented, my butt hole blazing, and the porch light still on, I waltzed outside and cleaned up all evidence of my incident. Unfortunately, memories are not as easy to cleanse as front porch bushes. This was one of the first stories told to my new boyfriend, who is now my husband.

Poop Report