The thing about sharing your story with other people is that when you do you are letting go a little piece of yourself. I have held on to these for a long time. If you know me well enough then it's very likely that you've either been a part of these or have already heard them, but they are two of my favorites.
I was on the crew team in college. While everyone else was sipping fruity drinks on the beach we were spending our spring break rowing doubles on the Schuylkill River. There isn't much that's spring like at 5AM in March. My teammate and I decided to reward our hard work with tattoos. We scheduled appointments in between practices at a place that was on the Main Line, about half an hour from campus.
My nerves back then weren't quite as strong as they are today. I remember many tense moments in the bathroom before races or the dreaded erg test. During the ride out to the tattoo shop I began to feel not so great. My stomach was churning and I broke into a cold sweat. I asked my friend who was driving to get me to the nearest bathroom immediately. Unfortunately, that happened to be our final destination. I took a deep breath and got out of the car.
Moments later, two men arrived on motorcycles. They were the owners of the shop. We were the first customers of the day. We followed them into the shop and sat down. They instructed us to wait a few moments while they prepared. I thought that this was the ideal time to use the toilet. A few minutes later I felt much better, that was until one of the men emerged from the back room and headed toward the bathroom with an empty coffee pot.
"Whoa! Man! What is that smell?" the he exclaimed, "It smells like someone stepped in something." He then instructed us to check the bottom of our shoes, while he did the same. Keep in mind at this point, neither of the men knew that I had used the facilities.He called to his brother in the back room, "Hey man, what did you do? It smells like something died in here." The other man came out to the spot where we had all convened. "I didn't do anything. Man, it sure smells rotten in here!" I looked at him and said "Oh yeah, sure you didn't" and we all started to laugh. Fortunately, my friend kept our secret. An hour or so later we both left with our first tattoos.
Unsurprisingly, my second story involves the use of the bathroom as well…
During my first semester of grad school at temple I enrolled in a class called developmental disabilities. One of the assignments involved a mentoring project. The class was divided into groups of three students. Each group was assigned a mentor, a person with a developmental disability, who would help the group plan an activity.
Our mentor (let's call her Joan) could not attend the first ice breaker/mixer gathering. We were given her phone number and instructed to schedule a get together somewhere on campus. We decided to meet at the Starbucks on campus one evening after work. Joan rolled in slightly after 5pm and greeted Carolyn, Maria and myself. She said that she hadn't eaten dinner yet and asked if we could move the meeting next door to Wendy's. We all agreed and packed up our things. I needed to use the restroom so I told them I would catch up with them in a minute. Joan informed me that she had to go as well and so she followed me down the hall, explaining that the medications she was taking made her have use the bathroom frequently.
There were two stalls. I slipped into the regular stall and Joan navigated her power wheelchair into the handicapped one. I was out quickly, washed my hands and waited for Joan who chatting up a storm. Suddenly, the conversation stopped. The next thing I heard was "There's no TP in here and I just took a giant shit!" No problem, I thought to myself as I grabbed a wad from the other stall and attempted to hand it under the door. She couldn't reach. I tried again, this time standing on the toilet and handing it over the door. She couldn't reach. She told me I would have to come in and hand it to her. Fabulous, I met this woman less than five minutes ago. I slowly backed in and handed it to her. A few seconds later she resumed her story right where she had left off, only to have it interrupted by another moment of silence, pause and "More TP please." Several minutes later the experience was over and we resurfaced at the Wendy's. My classmates had wondered where we'd disappeared to for so long and trust me, they got an earful at the end of the night.
