My Trail of Tears

***WARNING: This post may contain moments of grossness that may be disgusting for some readers.***

There are few experiences a person can go through that will cause him to undergo such a sense of delirious irrationality that normal social boundaries no longer seem so unbreakable. I experienced one of those moments last night coming back from a dinner with a friend.

So earlier that day during lunch, one of my coworkers had brought a giant crockpot of chili and rice, and she invited me over to eat it (which I gladly did). Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take my morning deuce because the day had been so crazy, so the entire day I was walking around feeling incredibly bloated. Thankfully because my mind was constantly occupied with the students, I never had to think about my discomfort and the need to poo eventually disappeared.

At 6:30ish, I got home and gave Kevin a call to see where he wanted to eat, and we decided on this NY style pizza place 3 blocks away. By this time I was starving so I ordered a large oreo milkshake and a medium 14" pizza (yes for myself). We were just chilling, watching the Cardinals get crushed by the 49ers and catching up, and by the end of it, I had eaten a little more than half the pizza. We walked back and about 2 blocks from my apartment, I got the first warning signs that I had to drop some dead weight. Unfortunately, I had to say goodbye to him (he graduated and might not be coming back) so the goodbye was extremely long, but I thought I could handle it at the time.

Finally after I started walking back, the warning bells in my head were starting to warm up, and I was still about a block and a half from my apartment. Tightening up all my muscles, I started walking a bit faster, silently yelling at myself for putting myself in this position... again.

When I reached my block, I knew that release was imminent, each step was torturous and I seriously was afraid that a moment of relaxation might be the end of me. However, on my last 15 feet to the apartment, there were two options. One, I could try entering through the front door, which was a lot closer to where I was, but the problem was my key was incredibly finicky and usually took 10 swipes to let me gain access (thus wasting valuable time)- not to mention there was also the need to add in waiting for the elevator to come. Option two involved walking through the alley on the side and trying one of the side doors and running up 3 floors to get to my door (right next to the stairway). When I reached the proverbial fork in the road, I finally decided I trusted my ability to hold things together and run up to the bathroom so I turned into the alley.

Now, if you've ever gotten to the point where you're turtle-heading, then you know the anguish I was feeling at this point. I could no longer walk straight anymore, instead, adopting a modified shuffle/limp helped by hunching over as low as possible with the hopes of maintaining as much tightness in my stomach as possible. My mind was racing a hundred miles an hour trying to think of possible outs, and one that I was beginning to seriously consider was dropping a dukey right there in the alley.

Before you start judging me and thinking I'm disgusting, you have no idea how panicked I was at this point. I was on the verge of tears and I was not in my right mind. I was starting to justify the notion of pooping in the alley because:
1) it was really dark, no one would be able to see me.
2) I'm a really fast pooer so I could probably do it before anyone walked by.
3) The place already smelled and looked nasty, so it'd fit right in.
4) I was close to giving up and letting go.
5) All the side doors that were normally open, were LOCKED.

I think I actually cursed a bit in my head when I reached the last door in the alley and found it locked. I rounded the corner and walked to the elevator in the back of our apartment since it was my last hope. This elevator has special significance because my first month in Austin, I was joking around with a friend as we were goin down that it smelled like she took a dump in the elevator. We were still laughing at it when the door opened up on the ground floor and there in front of us on the ground was a fresh steaming pile of human dung. Someone had freakin took a dump in front of the elevator! Granted it was in a back alley, but still we were pretty disgusted and even to this day, whenever people ride that elevator, we talk about that.

Anyways, remembering that story as I was waiting for the elevator kept freaking TEMPTING me and honestly, if the elevator didn't come as quickly as it did, I would probably have recreated that event. The ride up I got to rebuke myself and berate how stupid I was for all my mistakes that day that led to my situation, and when the door opened, I booked it to our apartment. When I keyed in the door, I threw off my shoes, started stripping as I ran to the bathroom, threw my leftover boxes into the sink on the way to the bathroom and made it in the NICK of time.

You would think this would be a lesson learned, but it has happened to me far too many times to count.