Shitting your pants in Northern Minnesota

The world is not a large place. Today we have means of conveyance that can carry us anywhere in the world in a matter of hours and days. No doubt in all this travel you will eventually find yourself in northern Minnesota, with your father, your younger step-brother and your cousin, all riding in a car loaded with camping gear returning from a week in the remote Minnesotan wilderness.

This is a step by step walkthrough of what will happen to your body, and your mind in this scenario.

This will happen to you.

You will pull out of the Two Harbors Culvers at roughly 12:30 CDT, after wolfing down a patty melt, fried cheese curds, and a medium strawberry/banana milkshake. This food will slide down your esophagus and rest on top of the digested fried fish, ramen noodles, summer sausage, and beef jerky that has been compacted in your loins over the course of four days.

45 minutes later, somewhere just south of Duluth, a shift will occur in your physiology. What was previously placid gestation will become quite literally an internal shit storm. It will feel like your stomach has dropped off the ledge of the Grand Canyon, and on the way down, deployed emergency air bags.

At this point, you will turn to your father and say something like
“I hate to do this, but I’m gonna need a bathroom.”

And your father will say,
“Ooo, that’s not so good. There aren’t gonna be any stops until the Black Bear Casino.”

You will play down the situation,
“Oh, ok, just whenever we see something.”

Silence will then take hold because you will be spending all of your mental and physical energy on controlling the waves of pain that are urging your bowels to commence emergency evacuation. Hope will rise whenever a wave subsides, and sweaty fear will grip you every time a wave gathers force.

You will miss an exit for a gas station.

You will then see your salvation, in the form of a Holiday Station. You will be excited, but that excitement will be tempered only by the fear that the bathroom could be occupied. You will quickly revert back to holding the tempest of poo at bay.

Your father will pull into the gas station parking lot, and you will exit as non-chalantly as your present condition will allow. You will then walk with as much speed as presently possible to the bathroom. You will enter the men’s bathroom.

Your fear will be realized- the only stall will be occupied.
And then you will receive hope – the toilette will flush.

And in this moment, you will think yes, it will be ok. But then the guy will just sit there on the toilette, not doing anything, like an asshole. Maybe he’s too embarrassed to come out. Who knows what the fuck he’s doing. He’s not shitting anymore that’s for sure. You will think about asking him to come out, but fearing any strain on the vocal chords will divert energy from your contracted sphincter, you think better of it.

You see the urinal. And you think maybe if you can take a piss, that might relieve some of the pressure. You unzip your pants, and realize there will be no controlled release at this point. You will consider taking a shit in the urinal. It’s not a terrible idea, considering the circumstances. But what if the guy comes out of the stall? He’s not coming out, he’s in there until you leave. But what if someone else comes in? Ok, that would be a problem. Would the urinal even hold all the shit that is about to leap from your asshole? Probably not, considering you haven’t taken a shit for 4 days since the prospect of being attacked by a bear while your pants are down has sufficiently stopped you up like a brick of government cheese.

At this point, you will hit your critical PSI, and your lower brain will take over.

Your legs will carry you out of the men’s room. They will turn left. And then it will start. A little bit at first, maybe 2 ounces will escape. You will clench with all your might.

Your legs will propel you into the women’s bathroom. Each step will release a few ounces more, as if your legs are a hydraulic pump. You are now in shock at what is happening. Is this happening? Yes, this is happening. You are shitting your pants in a gas station women’s bathroom in northern Minnesota. And yes, a woman is in one of the stalls.

Your legs direct you into a stall, and just as you step in, you will notice the woman exiting her stall. You will not question whether or not she saw you, that question will surface in a few minutes. You will close the door, and try to undo your cargo shorts. At this point, the battle will have been lost. Your concentration on the draw string, button, zipper combination will have diverted your energy from the fire drill happening in your ass, and with one last spasm, your colon will blow the rest of its contents into your shorts. And then gravity will take over.

You will look down to see a pile of shit at your feet. You made that. You will take off your shorts and your boxers, and sit down on the toilette seat. You no longer need to shit. Irony will be a concept too complex to grasp at this moment.

Shit will be everywhere. On your legs, on your ass, on your clothes, on the toilette, on the floor, on your feet. You will start to clean it up with the toilette paper in the stall.

And that’s when the smell will work its magic. Like salts to a woozy boxer, the stench will snap you from your Cerebellum Operating Mode, and your frontal lobe will kick in with all kinds of new thoughts.

You will take stock of your situation. You are sitting naked from the waist down, covered in shit, in a women’s bathroom of a gas station situated precisely nowhere in northern Minnesota. Cops could be on their way. Someone might enter the bathroom. If they look at the ground they’ll see your hairy man legs. If they look at the ground they’ll see a pile of shit between them. Concentrate on the task at hand. Clean up the mess with what is immediately available, the toilette paper.

Make sure not to use too much toilette paper before flushing, you don’t want to compound the problems of shit and overflowing water. Throw away your boxers in the trash can conveniently located next to the toilette. Clean off your shorts as best you can. Notice the temperature of your shit has plummeted from body temperature to something much cooler. It’s almost like mud from a spa, except it’s shit.

You will keep cleaning, amazed at how it really did get everywhere. And you will then make a plan to call your cousin who is waiting the car. But what will you say? Practice this. Eventually you settle on economy of words, and a didactic tone –

“Jeff, go into the trunk of the car, and get me a pair of shorts, then bring them to the women’s bathroom. Don’t ask questions.”

You will scroll through your phone looking for his number, but it will not be there. You will have to put your shit covered shorts back on for one last walk.

You will slide into them, and walk out of the bathroom. No one notices. You will look into the store, and see both your 13 year old step brother, and cousin walking out of the store. They will turn around and meet your eye, they will be grinning, you will not.

You will walk outside, open up the trunk and find a pair of shorts. Your cousin will inform you that the smell you’ve created is so powerful that neither he nor your step-brother could walk any closer than half way through the store. You will be a little impressed by this.

You will grab your new shorts and walk with purpose to the bathroom, where you will throw out our old shorts, clean yourself off once again, and put on the new pair of shorts.

You will return to the car, where your father will sit there in silence. Two minutes later he will ask you,
“what happened to your shorts?”

You will reply, “I threw them out.”

Your father will lament, “but those were nice shorts!”

You will quip “not anymore.”

Silence will then resume for the remainder of the car ride, during which, you will take massive breaths through your nostrils, constantly checking to make sure the stench you created in that bathroom has not carried into the car.

Your little half-brother will giggle about this for months to come.

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