Porta-Potties stink

I was thinking of proclaiming this Embarrassing Stories Week, but I’m not sure now. After all, I pretty much tell something embarrassing about myself daily or thereabouts anyway. All I can say about the week ahead is, “We’ll see.” Which, as you know, is ParentSpeak for “If you ask me about that again, I will beat you.”

I learned to have a healthy fear of pit toilets at an early age, by spending a good part of every summer camping with the family. We would pack up the station wagon and roll into one of those campgrounds with concrete tables, fire grates, and the dreaded outhouses. Mom tried her best to teach me how to squat in the woods to pee, but to this day, I can’t do that without spraying my feet. So I had to face Outhouse Trauma daily, and I never recovered.

So one day Rick and I went for a long hike, which, by the way, is not my favorite activity to begin with. It was fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk hot, and I consumed gallons of water and Diet Coke along the way. By the time we got back to the trailhead, I was so pumped full of liquid that I sprinted for the line of Porta-Potties waiting there.

Now, just because I was desperate didn’t mean that I was going to surrender completely to the dreaded pit toilet. The main rule is Do Not Look Into the Pit. I’m not 100% sure what happens if you break this rule, but I believe that you go blind and your hair turns into writhing snakes, after which boils erupt all over your body. All I know is, I don’t want to find out if I’m right.

Keeping the main rule in mind, I opened the door and backed into the stall. Of course, a lady never actually touches her nether regions to a public toilet seat under any circumstances, so I dropped my jeans and squatted just above the seat, and let loose several gallons of fluid. Seriously, I kept going for about a minute and a half, with a good solid stream. I was relieved and not just a little bit proud. Until I noticed that, um, the healthy stream was actually on its way out the front door. In my determination not to look into the abyss, I had failed to notice that I was squatting above a closed toilet seat. Of course, by the time I noticed that, it was too late to do anything but finish.

And then I took the long, lonely walk along the River Pee, holding my head high, and avoiding eye contact.