jennings rampage

For your consideration, a poop story.

I do a lot of driving, because, as we’ve established, I love my Meaghan and I love my car, in that order. So I drove down to Durham last Friday, and I drove back to New York on Sunday. It’s an eight hour drive in perfect traffic, which is getting more rare as the weather turns nice and everyone covers their eyes, fills their tank, and joins me on the road. The drive down took about ten hours, because I left too late in the afternoon and had traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, Delaware Memorial Bridge, and for some reason they were doing road work at the tollbooth of the Ft. McHenry Tunnel. The drive back also took about ten hours, because I pooped my pants.

I should explain. I was making decent time piloting the Stratus, having left Durham around 4:00pm and pacing to hit the George Washington Bridge right around midnight, despite hitting a little Sunday afternoon traffic north of Richmond. I wasn’t having the best drive of my life, it was rainy most of the way, but I was enjoying the freshly vacuumed interior of my car and listening to Jake Fogelnest spin the tunes on the satellite radio, and I couldn’t complain too much.

Six hours into the trip, it was time for my patented detour around the tollbooth at the Maryland-Delaware border. (Sorry, Delaware Turnpike Authority!) There’s a McDonald’s on that detour that I often stop at (like on Friday), and I figured I could enjoy a leisurely late dinner. I had the #3. Little did I know, I was setting myself up for THE NUMBER TWO.

Back in my car and pulling onto the local road to the highway, I felt the unmistakable twinge of my weak constitution. Now, my bowels can be a little strange. Lord knows I pour a whole lot of junk into my food-hole, but I have yet to find a correlation between a specific food and severe abdominal cramping — it appears to be completely random. And I certainly poured a lot of junk down on this day: chicken wings, meatballs, fried okra, a slice of cheesecake, and a bag of pizza flavored Combos, off the top of my head. Apparently, this day, I should not have chased it with a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese and a large order of fries. Who knew?

After the initial rumble, I knew I was in for a evening. Instead of turning around and going back into the McDonald’s to use the facilities, I got back onto I-95 and headed into Delaware. Once on the highway, I felt the unmistakable “holy shit it’s time to potty,” which might be the most unpleasant sensation in the human experience. (I’d take heartbreak, severe depression, and women laughing at my genitals over needing to poop really badly.) And this is where the story gets a little strange: for some reason, I passed the rest stop in Delaware, confident I could make it to New Jersey. After all, I’m a grown man, it’s not like I’m going to shit myself.

Just as I zoom past that rest stop, the potty sensation came back, twice as strong. Why did I think it was better to poop in New Jersey? Why did I think that would save me time? Why did I need to get more highway behind me before I stopped again? No time to consider any of that, because the sensation was growing geometrically with every wave.

By the time I was on the Delaware Memorial Bridge, I was in serious trouble. The radio was off, because that was way too annoying. The air conditioner was all the way to high, just to get a little relief from the sweats. I was actually saying, outloud, to nobody, “I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine.” I was driving in my usual maniacal fashion, except this time I was actually out of my mind.

The first rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike is about two miles down the road. Less than two minutes away from relief, except that the way I was clenching myself closed had the effect of lifting my foot off the accelerator. But I finally got to the rest stop, peeled into the parking lot, pulled through empty spots to get closest to the door, and in one motion it was engine off, lights off, seatbelt off, door open, door closed, car locked.

I did the buttocks-clenched waddle as quickly as I could to the door. The rest stop was relatively crowded for a Sunday night, the Phillies were hosting the Mets, so there were a lot of Mets jerseys milling around. I got as far as the passageway to the bathroom with a stall in sight before my epic fail. With every step I took, more rancid poo fell out of myself and into my boxer-briefs, until I finally got to the toilet. The rest stop bathrooms are a crapshoot (see what I did?), but I lucked out this time, I would have a clean stall to completely soil.

Door closed, pants down, spin around, fall onto the seat, let it out. I exhaled for the first time in ten minutes, not wanting to spoil the moment, but I had to look down. There was about two cups of perfectly smooth but slightly viscous brown poo in my shorts. Ok, so this is what we’re dealing with now. Shoes off, jeans off, boxers off. I took the boxers and carefully set them off to one side, while I finished the poo, cleaned myself off as best I could with rest stop toilet paper, put my jeans back on commando, got my shoes on, washed up at the sink, and went out to the car to retrieve my overnight bag. I always travel with one more pair of underwear than I think I need, just in case I stay an extra night or get sweaty and shower twice in one day or, in this case, shit myself. Back in the bathroom, and lo, the same stall was still available. My jeans also had a bit of poo on them, so I carefully wrapped them poo-side-in and packed them, and changed into a pair of khaki shorts. Now, the question of the soiled boxers.

To be clear, I never thought I was getting the boxers back. I’ve definitely jettisoned the underwear for far less than two cups of poo; these were a total loss. The problem was, I didn’t want to march out of the stall, gingerly carrying a heather cotton sack of shit. “Hey guys, this is what I think of the Phillies!” No, not tonight. All I could do was carefully push the shorts behind the toilet with my foot, and walk out confidently.

I returned to my car, put my overnight bag in the trunk (just in case), then immediately returned to the bathroom to shit some more.

Back on the highway at last. Then I stopped at the next two rest stops to shit even more. They were both close calls.

I got in around 2am, having learned no lessons.