Rambling Rhodes

WHOOPS, I crapped my pants

Via Twitter, longtime blogging colleague, Leblanc, steered me towards this, which is just chock full of awesome, and it also got me to thinking about the worst example I can recall of gambling on a fart and losing spectacularly.

Back in the summer of 1998, I had just graduated from college and was tenuously holding onto a business/city council reporting gig for the Winona Daily News. Actually, I was covering for the regular reporter, who was on maternity leave, so I basically knew I'd be out of a job in three months. Then again, at $6 an hour, I wasn't looking to make a career out of it, but I thought the experience would look good on the resume when I actually did go out looking for a career.

At any rate, one fine, sunny day in June, I was tasked with going out to get a story about a nearby hog farm that also was a plant nursery and craft shop. I know, it doesn't sound like a feasible business model, but in rural Minnesota the entreprenurial spirit can give birth to some business oddities. Don't believe me? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Pork and Plants.

So, I went out to Pork and Plants that day, put on my journalistic $6/hr. reporter's hat and, by God, I got the story. And what a story it was! It had pork. and it had plants. It had suspense. It had intrigue. Mostly though, it had pork and plants.

With my notebook smoking from all the notes I jotted down, I bid the proprietors of Pork and Plants a good and hopped back in my car--a 1989 Chevy Cavalier--for the ride back to the office.

Listening to my Rush Chronicles cassette tape, I was feeling good as I thought about the Hemingway-esque treatment I'd give to my Pork and Plants article. Perhaps it was the drowsy effect of the sun radiating through the car's windows, or just my general contentment with the world, but whatever the reason, I felt justified in letting loose a nice, rollicking ass rattle.

And, for about a half second or so, the fart went off without a hitch. Truth be told, it had the potential in its early stages of possibly ranking amongst my top five all time butt toots; it had a nice, deep tuba-like quality that promised a hearty aromatic bouquet would no doubt follow, with. . .

And then all hell broke loose.

People often use terms like "opening the flood gates" or "turning on a fire hose" or "really crapping my pants," but none of those really do justice to just what transpired that day. What exploded from my bowels that day was so forceful and unexpected, it nearly made me swerve into the ditch. I don't remember exactly what I screamed at that moment, but from what I recall of the incident, it went something like "AHHHHHH! AHHHHHH! AHHHHhhhhhhHHHHHH!"

Something I learned about crapping my pants that day was that, when I crap my pants while sitting in a cloth car seat, I instinctively clench and elevate my buttocks so that I'm in effect hovering over the seat without making direct contact. It was as if my mind made a snap judgement that said "Okay, the boxer shorts and pants are gone, man, but we can at least save the car seat."

So it was I found myself in a full press clench, hovering over my car seat, held aloft by sheer power of will, for the remaining three or so miles back to the office. During that time, my mind was dedicated entirely to the game plan that would play out once I was safely parked. I knew, for example, there was a pair of jogging pants in my trunk and, even though they hadn't been washed in weeks, they were most assuredly preferable over the soggy trouser mass I was inhabiting at the time.

Moving with deliberate, yet gingerly haste, I retrieved the jogging pants and stagger-stepped my way into the newspaper office, intent on only reaching the restroom, uttering a silent prayer that it would be unoccupied. It was, indeed, all mine, but you haven't lived until you've tried to mop your ass off in a bathroom sink, horrified that at any given second someone would enter the bathroom and you'd have to explain the frankly inexplainable situation that led to me being naked from the waist down, mopping my backside with paper towels, to say nothing of the unspeakably filthy boxer shorts soaking in the adjacent sink. I was willing to trash the pants, but the boxers were brand new silk jobbies that felt like I was wearing God's beard, so no way was I giving those up without a fight.

Eventually, which is to say in under five minutes, I had the situation under control. I ended up stowing the damp boxers in my glove compartment, and neglecting them for about a week, which led to an unfortunate dating anecdote that I won't share right now; suffice it to say. . . SURPRISE!

And that's how I ended up with the short-lived, but hilarious summer nickname, "Boxles the Clown," or just Boxles for short, given to me by "friends" I thought I could confide in (understand, at the time, I took this incident way more seriously than I'm conveying here).

Posted by Ryan at January 16, 2009 12:30 PM | TrackBack