I was sixteen and trying to get my best friend into weightlifting. I was really into it, but he never had really tried it, even though there was a set of weights and bench at his house for some reason – a really cheap and crappy set. It was one of those sets where there is a barbell and a couple of dumbbells that you load as you see fit with crappy weights that are plastic discs filled with concrete.
I had some leftover weights from a set of the same manufacturer, so I brought them over to his house one day and started showing him a routine for chest and arms. I was considerably stronger than he was; we had to add much more weight when it was time for me to do a set and take that much off when it was his turn. Just as we had finished adding weight for my set, he said something to the effect of, “Wow, I gotta take a dump right now. You lift. I’ll poop.”
I decided to do just that – lift while he pooped. We were using the bench press, a lift where you lie back on a bench and put your hands straight up in the air to grab a long bar with weights on either side of it. You then lower the bar to your chest and raise it again. We had every weight in both of our combined sets on the bar, which was only about 180 pounds, including those cheap set meant for non-serious lifter. I did a couple easy reps, and then I heard my friend’s furious pooping noises from the bathroom across the hall.
The noise he made that day could have been the funniest noise ever to be emitted by any human orifice in the entire history of mankind. The violence of it suggested that he was being propelled upward off the toilet with every blast and then landing on the seat when the blast ended. They were also louder than any butt blast that I had ever heard, or have since. And the timing was freakish. He let one short one go just as I was lowering the bar to my chest, and I immediately started laughing so hard that I couldn’t push the weight up. I had to balance it on my chest for a few seconds until I could compose myself. As I started lifting it up, he let fly with a longer, louder one that again broke my concentration, and had me laughing and balancing the weight on my chest again. Every time I got ready to lift the weight off my chest he’d respond with a new blast that dwarfed all of his previous ones. They sounded like Harley-Davidsons plowing through a foot of mud, the exhaust pipes submerged below the surface but the engine running at full power. After a few blasts, I was in disbelief that he had anything left in him at all, let alone enough to blow out an even bigger blast.
I don’t know how long this went on. Having 180 pounds on your chest, even if you are laughing uncontrollably, makes time seem longer than it is. After one blast – which was so loud it sounded like he was sitting next to me – a mental image sprang to mind of my best friend in a sitting position, clutching the underside of a toilet seat that seemed to have been partially blackened with explosives. He was just hovering in that position, because he had utterly destroyed the toilet that was at one time supporting him. His face was contorted into a look that was a mixture of rage and triumph, like when the Incredible Hulk would finally smash his enemy after a long battle.
It was then that I looked up and saw his mom standing still outside the bathroom door. She looked at me, laughing and trapped under a barbell, and then she looked at the bathroom door where she heard her son mercilessly assaulting the toilet. A serious, slightly concerned expression appeared on her face. She then turned toward the bathroom door again and said, in a very soothing motherly voice, “Hush, delicate one.”
For some reason, her remark was funnier than if my friend had just blown the bathroom door off its hinges with one final ass blast. I knew then that any hopes of getting the weight off my chest were gone. I tilted the bar to one side to dump the weights off of it. The clamp on the end gave way, being cheap and crappy, and not capable of holding the weights. With that side free, the other end of the bar dropped, releasing weights off the other side, and so I was free. Needless to say, no more lifting was done that day.

Poop Report