September 4, 2020. The eleventh blog in the RestorationAge

Weekly blogging is sometimes easy and near impossible other times. I try to start drumming up ideas and thoughts on Tuesday, write out a little on Wednesday or Thursday, and then on Friday, while drinking a beer (or two or three), smooth out the wrinkles or pin on a little flair.

This week, with the news cycle and worldly situations in their never-ending circling pattern, I wanted to change it up, but for the life of me, had trouble coming up with a thought train worth writing about. It’s in these times I revert to my past and try to relate it to my present or even future. I feel the need for some humor and think we need to discuss the one thing that all us aging people yearn for and celebrate every day openly, albeit gross to some.

It has been a joke for many years among friends that all conversations end up at what’s happening in the back section. I can guarantee you that get-togethers with close friends at some point returns to poop or tootin’. It’s normal, one subject we can all relate to each other on. No matter your age, sex, weight, or beliefs, these things are universal. And usually universally funny.

Everybody has funny dookie stories like: A guy I used to work with was like clock-work at 10am every day. I worked directly across from the bathroom and could hear him walking down the hall at 9:59am and see him enter the one-holer with a newspaper tucked under his left arm. Always the left arm. Fifteen minutes later he would exit and the stench of air freshener would strike me across the face – every. damn. day. It was so bad that my office mate and I finally requested that everyone stop spraying the citrus smell cause it smelled more like shitrus to us. We didn’t want to call him out, but I’m pretty sure all knew who the culprit was.

As with all kids, mine are full of it. Funny stories, that is. My kids grew up at bike races and consequentially had to learn to relieve themselves in strange places – outside. And I’m not just talking number 1. Oh no. If you’ve ever been to a road race in support of someone, in the middle of absolute nowhere, you know that when mother nature calls, she’s already screaming. Try getting a two to four year old to hold it until after the race. Not happening.

At one particular race whose location has been erased from my mind because we probably weren’t allowed to return, other wives and I were sitting roadside with supporters of other racers. Now, my kids knew not to stray too far or else one of my friends would snatch them up. I don’t remember if my dear daughter let me know what she had to do or not, but one of the other women at the race yelled over at my friend Marla that there was a little girl, butt-naked, taking a big poop right there at the side of the road and did she know who the little girl belonged to. Marla yelled over to me and fortunately I had heard the message to Marla. I looked over at Cate and this other woman and yelled, “No, I don’t know whose kid that is.”

This is just one of many Cate poop stories – forget about the fact that during our two major house hunts we often judged the house on whether Cate was comfortable enough to go poop there during the showing, which was often. And poor Ian isn’t without his stories either. In middle school, he refused to go to the bathroom at school. Who knows the reason, but every afternoon when he got off the bus he would do what we used to call his “poop walk” all the way straight into the house and to the bathroom. It was a slow, pained, squeezed-up walk.

Obviously the funniest and most embarrassing stories are your own. At least they are to me. My first big embarrassing moment I remember was in eighth grade. My class was leaving our own school and going to the high school for a big assembly. It must have been a big deal because we were dressed up. I was wearing a skirt and pantyhose and everything. We were all going to be in high school the next year and it was going to be cool to be with the older kids for the afternoon.

Before we took the bus over, they lined us up to go to the bathroom and each took our turn. I must not have been very well-versed in wearing pantyhose and a skirt to school, because in my excitement tucked the back of my skirt into my hose and toilet paper had somehow gotten caught in the whole mess and was dangling out of the back and down toward the ground. No one told me. We unloaded at the high school and it wasn’t until some of the older kids started laughing at me did I realize what was happening. I was mortified and sure that when I got to this school the next year, everyone would remember me as the girl with the toilet paper hanging out of her pantyhose. Thankfully they did not.

There were some good stories of hiding bodily functions while Mike and I dated, but probably my most embarrassing moment was a work episode back in the mid-90s. I had been working with General Electric on video support of their product roll-outs for several years and as we geared up for another of these presentations, the whole team – the video team, the GE product team, the advertising team, the vice-president of sales – met to get an idea of what we were headed into. It was a high powered meeting and very, very serious.

At one point in the meeting someone needed to speak to me outside the room. I excused myself, got up, and as I turned to leave the conference table, ripped the biggest fart you have ever heard. I don’t even know where it came from, obviously somewhere deep within the bowels of desperation. I know it came as a shock to everyone cause it did to me. What do you do in that moment? I honestly don’t know if I even thought about it, I just kept moving. I didn’t skip a beat, just straight to that door to get the hell out of there. I didn’t even look around, just kept moving. Of course they all heard it because there was snickering as I headed toward the door and when I exited, the room exploded in complete laughter. Mortified, embarrassed, but couldn’t help myself from laughing either. For the love, what had just happened?

Poop. Fart. Our first cus words as kids. And probably the funniest thing that we STILL talk about as adults. It’s what brings us all together. It’s our common ground, but just be careful where you step because Cate may have been here.

Till next week.

LLM