the only thing worse
than bad memories
is no memories at all..
[dismemberment plan]
12.27.2006
If You Guys Have Time...
Please help me think positive thoughts!!!
My brother just told me that former president Gerald Ford died tonight.
Though I am certainly saddened by his death -- I am in an incredible state of distress for another reason.
I have two turtles at my dorm in New York right now while I'm here in New Jersey for the holidays. I left them with a bunch of feeder fish to eat while I'm gone.
It's been several days since I left them, and I was confident that they would make it through. I cleaned their tank thoroughly before I left, made sure the filter was connected, left a bunch of fish for them to eat.
But the thing is... my baby turtle, the smaller, shy one -- His name is Gerald Ford.
(Gerald's brother, Hans.)
And if this isn't foreshadowing, I don't know what the fuck is.
I have to go back to the city and get my turtle babies!!! I have this terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach about little Gerald and Hans. I am glad, however, that my other turtle isn't named James Brown -- that would be a little too freaky for me to handle.
Please, if you have a moment, try to channel some positive energy to two turtles in Manhattan. I do think I left them in good shape, with plenty of resources to sustain them until my return, but I'm going back to the city as soon as humanly possible to bring them back with me, even if it angers my dad (who previously dumped my three then-adolescent turtles into a river while I was away at school).
I'll leave you with a Simpsons quote, from the episode that concludes with Gerald Ford moving in next door.
Gerald Ford: Say, Homer, do you like football? Homer: Do I ever! Gerald Ford: Do you like nachos? Homer: Yes, Mr. Ford. Gerald Ford: Well, why don't you come over and watch the game and we'll have nachos, and then some beer. (Homer and Ford cross the street together.) Homer: Jerry, I think you and I are going to get along just--- (They both trip in Ford's driveway) Homer & Ford: D'oh!
On the morning of December 20, 2006, my friend Jody and I ran through Penn Station. He was kindly carrying my enormous green rolling luggage cart, and I was running with the words "Shit shit shit-shit-shitshitshit!" going through my head.
I had to catch a train at 9:37am to arrive at around 10:40am, so that I could get nasal surgery at 11am.
The clock read 9:36 when I got to Penn Station, and "ALL ABOARD" was flashing on the giant timetable, indicating that the train on Track 1 was about to take off. "SHITFUCKSHITFUCKSHITFUCK!"
Jody and I hurled ourselves down the steps, and I saw the train still in the station. There were two other frazzled people who had just made it down the stairs, were running for the door to enter. They were all closed. They opened momentarily, and the three of us let out a collective sigh of, "OH THANK GOD," but then the doors immediately closed again. Like some kind of filthy tease. And then, after 10 seconds of my heart thumping in my eyeballs, waiting helplessly for the doors to please open again, please god, the train gave a gassy hiss, lurched, and left the station for New Jersey without me.
There was a train across the platform that would be going in the same general direction but on a slightly divergent path. After throwing myself upon a train conductor, knocking his hat askew, I found myself irrationally trying to bargain with the sweaty, pink-faced man. "Is there any way I can catch my train later if I get on this one? Do they meet up somewhere? I have to catch that train!" Then, I suddenly found myself taking on the role of one of those grumpy, fussy old ladies that you hear loudly complaining inappropriately about a personal medical ailment and making everyone around her feel uncomfortable: "But I have surgery at 11! I need to get there on time!" The conductor gave me a withering look that clearly said, "Well, what the fuck do you want ME to do about that? Jesus!" to which I replied, "Can you put me on a plane or a helicopter? Please?"
At that moment another train conductor approached us, and he turned out to be one of the conductors that I'd become very friendly with two summers ago, when I took the train every weeknight on my drunken trips home from my shitty jobs in the city. I doubt that he even remembers my name, and I think his name is either "John" or "Kevin," but I'm not quite sure, either. But he said, "Well hello there." "Hi! I missed my train!" "I see that. I saw you running like a madwoman."
He told me to get on his train and get off at the Rahway stop, and I figured that even though my brother would have to make a longer drive to make to pick me up, it would be better than being late for my appointment. I said goodbye to Jody, and climbed on. I arrived at 10:20am at Rahway. My brother, who had graciously agreed to driving out to come get me, called me, saying, "Is Rahway the same thing as Linden?" "No." "Oh okay. I'm lost. I'm going to drive around and hopefully I'll find it." "Okay..."
Miraculously, he arrived shortly thereafter. And after my mom told him she moved the 11:00 appointment back to 12 noon, we drove home. A knot slowly started developing in my stomach. I had a brief flashback of the oatmeal incident with my mom that I described in my last post, which again was in response to my lack of punctuality. I could only imagine what kind of angry, fiery ball of fury I would be walking in on when I arrived at home. My palms started sweating at the thought.
I got home to a tired, pinched, angry face. The tired, pinched, angry face drove me to the doctor's office at breakneck speed, making squealingly sharp turns and screeching abrupt stops. My fists, stomach, neck muscles, and, yes, even my butthole were clenched with the tension by the time we arrived. We made it in one piece, to an unmarked office plaza. "I hope this right place," my mom said to me. "I am get old and cannot remember things now."
It was the right place. A receptionist in bright red-and-blue scrubs, with tightly tied-back honey-colored hair, and clownishly red lipstick and blue eyeshadow signed me in. I got taken into a small room, wherein I sat down with my mom, then was led into another room that had a small rolling cart with a suspiciously old-looking beige plastic equipment with wires and cords squirting out of it set upon it.
A wrinkly looking, nervous woman who was probably in her late 40s, also in scrubs, was plugging wires in with blatant uncertainty, with a clear look of "DUH?!?!" on her face. Not a good sign. My doctor, a small Korean man with pockmarks on his face and enormous, yellow Bugs Bunny teeth, said, "Yes, plug the green one into the green socket, the black one into the black socket. There you go. Yes." "Thank you, Dr. Kim." "No, thank you."
In my head: "OH MY DEAR GOD OH MY DEAR GOD I AM GOING TO DIE."
(Some relevant backstory:) I visited this Ear Nose Throat (ENT) doctor a few months ago for the first time with my mom and dad. Just to go. Dr. Kim remarked that my ears were very clean. "Too clean, almost," he said. "Wow, okay."
Then he looked in my nose.
He said something in Korean that meant something like, "Holy dear sweet Jesus in heaven." And then explained to me that the reason why my nose is always mildly to severely stuffy 365 days of the year is because the "little sausages" (Google later told me that they are called "turbinates") inside my nasal cavity are extremely swollen, all the time. And that they needed to be lasered and reduced so I can breathe.
So in those few months in between my initial prognosis and my actual surgery date, I made it a point to neither mention my upcoming procedure nor to Google it. First, I wasn't 100% sure I was going to get it, and secondly, I didn't want to freak myself the fuck out about it. But a week before I was to get it done, when I was procrastinating with finals, I peeked on Google. And saw blindness and other terrible things listed as possible complications. (/end Relevant backstory)
So looking at this fake nurse fumbling with the wires and cords and making nervous, shrill small talk with the buck-toothed doctor made me very, very nervous.
As the doc reclined the chair back, my back remained erect, and I said, "Wait, isn't anyone going to tell me what is going to happen???" "Well, we're going to numb the area and use a laser," he said, hastily. "Okay, let's get to it!" "Numb me with what? A needle?" "Yes." "Where?" "Oh, only about -this much of the way in-," he said, pinching his thumb and pointer together. Then he pulled out a 7-inch-needle.
"OH FUCK THIS," my brain said to me. "LET'S GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!."
I was hoping they were going to knock me the fuck out unconscious for the procedure. Or even some laughing gas, or SOMETHING. Nope.
I slid down in the chair.
"Uh, where are you going?" asked Dr. Kim, humorlessly. The doctor strapped on what looked like a coal miner's helmet, with a flashlight attached like a unicorn horn, and came at me. "She's trying to slide her way all the way out of the office!" sniggered the wrinkly fake-nurse, nervously. I wanted to strangle her, violently, kick her lifeless body, and then run away, scream-crying.
Instead, I asked my mom to come stand next to me and hold my hand. I held her small, rough hand in my right hand, tightly, and covered my eyes with my left, tightly. He slipped in some kind of instrument (I couldn't see what it looked like) that opened up my left nostril to what felt like the size of a gay man's distended anus, right after a pull-out. Like, huge. Goatse.cx huge.
Then, I felt something thin scrape the inside lining of my nose, and a sharp prick entering my BRAIN. Well, obviously it wasn't really my BRAIN but it was surely mere millimeters away from my precious (freshly developed) frontal lobe. I gripped my mom's hand tighter and crushed my teeth together.
My mom said quietly to me, in Korean, "They should have told me you were going to be awake, I would have at least given you a Xanax or something!" "DAMMIT MOM. GODDAMMIT MOM," I said.
The needle pricked my brain/nose about 5-6 more times, a foul, sickly sweet liquid began to fill the back of my throat, which I was forced to swallow ("Is it okay if I swallow this?" "Yes." Gulp.) and then the needle withdrew. Deep breaths. Deep, shaking breaths. It felt like it had been pricking me right behind my eyeball. My teeth were starting to feel funny. Numb and overstimulated at the same time, somehow.
I felt something sharp poking deep, deep in my nose. "I just want to make sure it's numb in there," he said. Then, snip, snip, I heard/felt small scissors snipping my lovely nose hairs out. He nipped the inside of my nose a bit. "OW!" "Sorry."
Then, a low, barely audible buzzing. And a feeling like the hot sun was inside my nose, incinterating my brain. "OH SWEET JESUS!" I gasped. "OH DEAR SWEET JESUS!"
I couldn't move, for fear that if I did, the laser would shoot me in my brain. My right foot was an inch off the chair, twitching, somehow pleading for help. "Helpmehelpmehelpme," said my spasmodically twitching foot. "Helpmeplease. Iwillgiveyoumoney," it said.
"UNGGGGGG," I moaned. "THIS FEELS SOOOO WEIRD. THIS FEELS SOOOOOOOO WEIRDDDDD."
The lasering continued for several eternities. The burn felt like an iron was being pressed into my nose, which at the time felt like a sunburned, slapped vagina. "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhkay. Ohhhhhhhhhhhkay. Ohhhhkay." I kept repeating this, over and over, as though meditating. "Ohhhhkay."
"We're almost done," lied Dr. Kim. "You're lying," I said. "Um."
Then, the burning got worse. "Oh, SHIT!" I said. "SHIT!!!"
My mom became flustered at this. "Yaejina," she scolded me in Korean, clearly embarrassed. "Dr. Kim goes to our church, you shouldn't be cursing..."
"I'M NOT RELIGIOUS! SHIT! FUCK! SHIT!" I said, as my brains were zapped. I threw in for good measure: "JESUS MARY JOSEPH!" I think I heard the fake-nurse weeping quietly in the background.
A sharply tipped vaccuum sucked things out of my nose. Then, all the painful utensils came out.
"The second time probably not be so bad," said my mom, stroking my hand.
"We're almost done," Dr. Kim said, again. "You're just going to do the same thing to me, all over again," I said, a little angry. "Um."
The instrument was stuck in my right nostril this time, and this time I got 6-7 injections, the rush of fluid filling the back of my throat again. But I didn't numb up as quickly this time, so it took 5 additional injections before the doctor started again. "You can FEEL this??" he asked, sounding surprised as he poked me. "YESSSSSSS," I replied through clenched teeth. "OWWWWW." "Sorry."
The snipping of scissors, again. He nipped this side, too. This time, he didn't apologize. The feeling of the needles and the scissors sliding in and out of my nose was absolutely terrible.
Then, the flickering buzz of the laser. It felt like he was branding the world's smallest cow's ass, which happened to be my nasal cavity, with the hottest branding iron in the world. Again and again. "Sorry, SORRY!" he'd say, when I threatened him with murder. "SORRY!" But he kept on going, unyieldingly. "This side is much worse," he insisted.
"SHIT SHIT SHIT! SHITTT!!!!"
My mom at this point was beyond mortified. In an attempt to quiet me, she said, "Do you want me sing song for you?" My mom is wonderful at singing. She especially likes singing while I'm on the phone with someone, just so I can tell her afterwards that the person I'd been talking to had commented on her lovely singing voice. "You want me sing song for you?"
"YES," I said. "YES." She squeezed my hand tightly. "You want me sing 'Silent Night'?" "YES." But she was so scared, her voice shook, and the words didn't come out for more than two syllables. It trailed off, and the sound of the buzzing laser and the doctor's breathing was all I heard. I squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back. Poor Mom.
Then after 45 minutes of pure hell, it was over. Doctor Bucktooth Korea stopped, the instruments were removed from my nose, my lips and teeth finally became completely numb, my chair was put back into its normal position, and I sat there, my legs sore from being tensed so tightly, trying to figure out if I had really cheated death.
My mom was sitting back in a chair, softly making gagging noises and taking deep breaths. I got up, said, "What did you DO to me?" to the doc, was told that I would have internal swelling for about a week, received a prescription for a nasal emollient, and we made our way out to the waiting room, where my mom paid the clownish receptionist $10 for the said emollient, and thinly red blood started slowly trickling out of both nostrils.
"UMM, DOCTOR KIM?" wailed the receptionist, leaping from the chair. "DOCTOR KIM?" My mom gave me a wad of tissues, which I pressed firmly to my leaking bloody holes. The doc came out and said it was totally normal. We left. My mom kept making comically exaggerated gagging noises.
We got home, I perched myself on the couch, went on the internet on my laptop, and that is where I have been for the past 30 hours. The insides of my nose is scabby, swollen, and runny. I slept with my mouth open last night, because the insides of my nose were so swollen that I couldn't breathe otherwise. My lips are really chapped.
There's a dull pain near my brain, way deep in there, that throbs, all the time. I'm nursing it by slowly hacking away at the gigantic pile of of dark chocolates purchased at CostCo, sitting on the couch perusing the internet on my shitty laptop, and watching hours and hours of Korean tele-dramas on DVD that my mom recently got me hooked on (which is really unbelievable, because I am the LAST person in the world who would ever be hooked on anything remotely Asian).
I'm on disc 6 out of 11 of the latest K-drama, which of course involves some kind of complicated, wholly misogynistic love-quadrilateral. And even though I find the female characters incredibly irritating and shallow, and the male characters more than vaguely effeminate (and I imagine their genitals to be caricaturely small), I have to admit that the romantic aspect is done so well, that I find myself considering the previously inconsiderable -- being possibly attracted to an Asian male. DUN-DUN-DUN!
But that's probably just the pain-killer drugs talking. (The doc told me I can only take Tylenol.)
Anyway, my nose has been leaking a steady stream of viscous fluid ever since the surgery, and it is wholly unpleasant. But anytime I want to laugh, I think of my mom getting choked up trying to sing "Silent Night" but being too scared. Either of that or I picture a midget surfing on a rainbow, which makes me giggle. Oh, or that Justin Timberlake "Dick in a Box" video on YouTube that people can't seem to fucking stop forwarding to me. And with that, on that note, I must go to sleep. Please pray for my wounded, scabby nose, internet. And please pray that my follow-up appointment in two weeks goes well, and that the doctor will not decide that I need ANOTHER procedure. Because if that indeed is the decision, then Doctor Yellow Bucktooth, Fake-Nurse NervousLaugh, and Clowny McReceptionist are not leaving that shitty office alive this time.
The first time I quit drinking for an extended amount of time was two summers ago, in the year 2005. It was after el-grande-break-up-o which drove me to get shitfaced drunk pretty much every weekday night before stumbling onto my train at Penn Station and heading home.
At that point, I was 20 years old, working two shitty summer jobs in the city. I could throw back 5-6 scotches, shoot the shit with the train conductors (who eventually stopped taking my ticket and let me ride free), take a 1/2 hour nap with my drunkass mouth gaping open, stumble out of the train with my clothes and hair disheveled, and fall into the passenger seat of my brother's/dad's/mom's car at around 11pm.
Surprisingly, either my brother and father didn't realize that I was piss drunk during this time, or they completely turned a blind eye to it. My mother, on the other hand, picked me up from the train station on rare occassion because she works the night shift, and was emotionally blown away by the sight of her daughter, flush-faced with booze, slurring her words, and reeking of scotch. She only experienced this twice, but twice was more than enough.
My mom, whom I love dearly, can be an extremely scary person when provoked -- and is even scarier in silence. I have a very distinct problem with punctuality, and all through high school, my mom would have to drive me to school because I'd miss the bus EVERY goddamn morning.
One morning, the defecation truly made contact with the rotary oscillator, and she waited patiently in our emerald green Dodge Caravan with the engine idling, and a small porcelain bowl of instant oatmeal sitting on the dashboard for me to eat for breakfast. In complete silence.
I climbed into the car, legs shaking, heart thumping, waiting for her to go apeshit on me. Instead, she peeled out of the driveway, tires squealing, and I watched in pure horror as the bowl of hot oatmeal slowly slid across the dashboard, flipped over the edge, spilling oatmeal all over her and the floor -- and all the while her face DIDN'T EVEN MOVE. Complete silence.
I still think that's the scariest moment I've ever experienced with her. Damn, Mom!
In any case, the second time I came home all crunkled out of my mind, we drove home in complete silence, she came into our home, sat on our pink carpeting (ugh, what were they thinking with the pink carpet???), put her small, gray face in her hands, and didn't cry. She just sat there, eyes closed, wordlessly. I said to her, "I'm just going through something kind of hard right now, okay?" and walked her up to her bed. And decided to stop.
And I did. It lasted for several months, actually, and afterwards, I found that my tolerance for boozing had decreased dramatically. It was like comparing a boulder to a peanut. Well, I won't be that harsh on myself -- more like a Brazil nut. But my legendary night of downing 15 scotches and 2 beers (along with --oops-- two doses of allergy medicine) and waking up feeling fresh as a daisy was clearly far, far behind me. One drink, had fast enough, makes me slur. Two drinks makes me tipsy. Three makes me look like this: (X_X) -- passed the fuck out, with x's in my eyes.
As many young people are foolish enough to do, I used to rely on drinking to make me feel a little more comfortable in social situations. Only recently have I finally figured out that it in fact makes me act like a fucking retard. I can't say that I recall any instances in which I started talking gibberish and drooled on the person next to me while I was sober (except perhaps during my interview at The Onion -- whole different story).
And being around lots of other drunk people lately have just turned me off to the whole thing. I've never been one to partake in any of the "WOO! DRUNK FRAT PARTY!" gatherings, because usually the types of characters at those things make me want to punch a baby in the brain. But last week, after a holiday party for one of my internships, I immediately sobered up when I had to stuff one of my male co-workers into a cab at 4am (in the goddamn freezing cold weather, by the way), carry/push him up two flights of stairs, get him into bed safely, and make sure he didn't puke in his sleep. "WILL YOU PWEASE TAKE CARE OF ME???" he slurred to me in the cab, his eyes half-closed, his mouth flaky with a layer of dried saliva. "HAY LOOK WHAT I FOUND IN MY HAT," he said, reaching into the brim of his festive Santa hat with one hand, his other arm hanging onto me for dear life. "HERE'S A CANDY CANE. YOU WANT A CANDY CANE?" He handed me a fractured candy cane. "... IT'S BWOKEN."
Last Wednesday, my gorgeous friend R. hooked me up with a one-night job at some big corporate party. I'd never done anything remotely like this before, but it seemed harmless enough. A major mortgage company rented out this huge auto showroom on the West Side, and R and I (along with about 6 other girls) were basically paid an amount of cash for standing next to flashy cars for 4.5 hours while wearing cocktail dresses (to my amazement, I immediately realized that I had been at this same place almost a year ago for a different party, but as a guest).
Basically, the place was a complete douchebag sausage fest. It was a suit-and-tie event, with 30-80 year old men (attorneys and bankers, mostly) trolling about in their dark suits, their gelled thinning hair glistening, their decorative facial hair carefully groomed, grunting at us girls with that special twinkle in their eyes, and grabbing at the hors d'oeuvres like rescued shipwreck survivors. There were a few wives or girlfriends or lovers in the bunch, but they were all hideously powdered up, with nasal Long (or Staten?) Island accents, bleached hair, and clear lucite stripper heels. It was like being in a sociological experiment.
So as I stood next to a yellow Lamborghini (that's right, they put the only yellow girl next to the yellow sports car -- I really applaud the party planner for her matchy-matchy sensibilities) in my black cocktail dress (they gave me a red one to wear, but I brought my own -- thank god, because the one they gave me was basically a gaudy gunny sack several sizes too big) and gold high heels, I was approached by a number of smirking goons with tiny plates of shrivelled up cocktail weiners asking me if I "came with the car." I was so taken aback by the lack of originality that I couldn't even think of anything clever to respond with. "Uh, yes? I rove you rong time?" (Well, no, I didn't actually say that.)
But as the night wore on, the men got drunker and drunker at the open bar. And since I had to stay anchored at my beloved yellow Lamborghini, I actually looked forward to people talking to me to keep my mind off of the hours of boredom that I was subjecting myself to. Here's a few that stand out in my mind:
First, some smartass greasy guy came up to me bragging that he had the same Lamborghini, but in red, and how he takes it up to 180 on the Jersey Turnpike. (I give him a D for being a stupid douche trying to impress girls by talking about driving fast in New Jersey. Nice one.)
One guy in his 20s, Dennis, his fair Irish face already pink as the pope, chatted me up about Broken Lizard movies, of all things. (I give him an B+ for humor and congeniality.)
An old man with a soft Brooklyn accent -- an attorney who reminded me of my high school English teacher -- gave me all sorts of worldly advice on how to be happy and not be taken advantage of, and brought me a drink. (I give him an A for being a sweet, non-perverted old man with a lot of smart things to say.)
Then there was this bald fat man who told me about his wife and daughter and brought me another drink. (I give him a B+ for when he told me about how his local Girl Scouts chapter is run by Nazi moms looking for slapfights and drama. Reminds me of my GS days.)
The worst, though, was this drunk, fat, old, whitehaired, sweaty slob -- I could see his forehead glistening with sweat from a mile away, who tried to be on me like a damp fur coat.
"You're a beautiful young thing," he said, wheezing from his epic fatness. "Can I take one of those?" he asked, while squeezing between his fat sausage fingers a chocolate bonbon that I had been saving for later, resting atop a pile of sliced strawberries in a martini glass.
"Sure," I said.
He began talking to me about the mercurial nature of love, and how he wanted to take me out for dinner sometime. Mid-conversation, this guy, who has a spitting problem (which doesn't surprise me at all), inadvertently spat out a huge glob of half-chewed chocolate filling out onto his own hand, right onto the fleshy part of his thumb on his left hand, with which he'd been gesticulating the whole time. This glob of spitty chocolate, now congealing on his hand, burned a hole in my brain. I couldn't look away from it. And though my eyes were fixated upon it, the guy kept talking and talking about how he was unhappy with his 20-year-long marriage and wanted to have an affair, sweat beading on his greasy face like condensation on a cold glass of beer sitting out on a table at your favorite Mexican restaurant with outdoor seating on a hot summery day.
It was fucking grotesque. During the whole conversation, it was like being in a warm rainstorm, his spit spraying all over my face. I had to turn my entire body sideways and stand next to him to partially avoid the sprinkle. Wiping my face didn't seem to get the message across. And finally, the moment of utter disgust came, when he grabbed my hand in both of his, chocolate glob still clinging onto his skin with the sheer adhesive power of his saliva, asked me one more time for my number, which I enthusiastically declined, and as he closed with the line, "Life is so short... when you see a chance at happiness, you should try and grab it," the last moment of contact his tongue made with the roof of his mouth expelled a globule of spit with such great force and accuracy, that it landed onto the surface of my eyeball and, I imagine, spread all over it and infiltrated my tearducts.
The spit in my eye and the image of the congealing chocolate spittle is enough to replace the giant squid in my nightmares. (I give him an F for Fucking Fetid Fatso. Duh. Come on, now.)
Anyway, what I'm saying is, I'm tired of seeing drunk people act stupid. Sure, it's fun and games for a little while, but then you wake up with a terrible headache, your stomach turning, your brain overcome with the urge to murder a kitten or a small child. And I'm tired of being one of those stupid drunk people. So I'm laying off for a while. Maybe my tolerance will shrink even more, and I'll have to start carrying around a thimble or an eyedropper to drink from. That would be kind of cool -- eccentric.
Bonus side note:
I often wonder what the appropriate protocol is when you walk into the ladies' room and one of the toilet stalls looks like it's been hit with a goddamn shit bomb. I'm not necessarily that I'm sooooo totally grossed out by it (well, I am a little), but I feel like most of the options I have involve the possibility of someone else walking in after me and assume that I'm the filthy heathen that left the stinky mess for all to see, which bothers me intensely.
Option 1: Flush toilet with my foot and move on to another stall. This is a terrible option, because the risks of (1) shitwater splashing up and hitting my face, and (2) someone walking in on me doing such a thing and assuming I had dropped such a large, stinky bomb are all too present. (Rated D+ for potential filth, even though, overall, the elimination-by-flushing strategy is ideal)
Option 2: Ignore it and use a different stall. Ideally, the next person to walk in would see my closed stall and safely assume that I hadn't done the doody deed. But what if I crossed paths with someone en route to the bathroom as I was just exiting the door? Would a lack of eye contact indicate guilt? Would a presence of eye contact with the person insinuate mischief and an implied glee at the possibility of a poop packet being discovered? How does one conduct oneself in such situations? (Rated C- for irresponibility and for raising such confusing existential crises)
Option 3: Warn other people. Haha! Yeah right. "One if by land, two if by sea! The Doo-Doo Butters are coming!" One should avoid this strategy because of the "The one who smelt it, dealt it" theory. (Rated D for stupidity)
Option 4: Try to close that particular stall door from the outside. This is what I usually do. That way, no one else will see it -- out of sight, out of mind. And though it might fester there for a prolonged period of time until the poor maintenance lady comes by to dispose of the fully marinated evidence, hey, everyone can blame HER for dropping that deuce! (Rated B+ for passing along the guilt down to the bottom of the working class hierarchy. Take that!)
Seriously though, what kind of sick freaks don't flush in public restrooms? You people are fucking sick. I came across one winner on the 9th floor of the main building at school. Either the person who produced such a log had the anus the width of a mason jar, or the poop had become incredibly bloated like a waterlogged drowning victim who hadn't been discovered until months after the fact. It was literally the size of a tennis ball tube. The size of a typical hero roll. Twice -- nay, thrice -- the girth of a chocolate crueller at Dunkin' Donuts. Specked with pieces of corn and various roughage. Pieces of it had dissolved in the surrounding murkiness. I share these details with you so that it grosses you out and encourages you, the readers, to not partake in such barbaric acts. Flush, people. You goddamn filthy beasts. And don't forget to wash your hands afterwards. With soap, I said! Thank you.
Note: I just switched to Blogger Beta (ugh) and it wiped out my original comments server (non-Blogger). So everything looks like it has zero comments. But, I guess we'll start anew! I'll try to figure out how to fix this shit. The new comments system should be working fine though.
I'm tired and scared and I don't know if I can do this anymore.
I feel like this:
(It's finals time.)
Edit: I'm told the comments are not working. And I'm trying right now, and it ain't happening for me, neither! So just come visit me in NY and give me a hug, problem solved.
[Peek-a-Foo]
