I was on my way to work. Normally it’s a 40-minute drive, but there was an accident on a bridge, so I had to sit tight for the time being. The minutes passed. The comfortable morning dump threshold was reaching critical mass after the daily energy drink and breakfast burrito.
I’d been sitting in traffic at this point for the better part of an hour, and decisions had to be made. Soil myself in traffic, or come up with a solution to relieve myself without exposing myself on a freeway.
As the lack of AC on a hot summer morning mixed with humidity you could cut with a knife stuck to my skin, it was now time to activate plan “do my business in a bucket lined with a Dick’s Sporting Goods bag in the footwell of the passenger seat of my Subaru Forester.”
If being in the Army taught me anything, it was how to handle bodily functions in weird places at the most inopportune times.
Step 1. Grab the bucket out of the trunk (usually it’s my fishing live bait bucket, so it already smelled like death). Step 2. Grab one of the many bags in the back seat that could handle the load. Step 3. Add baby powder to the bag to help with moisture and odor absorption.
The clock is ticking.
Step 4. Position shirts from my trunk in the windows so the other people in traffic won’t see the war crimes I’m about to commit. Step 5. Pray and strain.
I did have to lift myself off the bucket a little because gravity could only help me so much in a 5-gallon container. All in all, it went well. A sacrificial wiping shirt was put into the bag, and it was a wrap. Ten minutes later, traffic started moving. I tossed my shame out the window as soon as I hit my exit.
It doesn’t end there.
Previously, I got a promotion that gave me my own office. This day was my first day. When they gave me the keys to the office, I was being lazy and put them into an empty Zyn can for “safe keeping.”
When I got to work, the can was nowhere to be found. Anxiety was already elevated from being late. Now this.
No. Nononononononono. It couldn’t be… in the bag.
I turned around and drove back to the scene of my crime, screaming into my steering wheel.
There it was—the warm, lifeless Dick’s bag with the fluorescent yellow trauma shirt.
Gagging from the steaming disaster in hand, I feel the can through the bag. No. Oh, no. The knot is too tight.
I pushed that can out like a third grader with a Go-Gurt tube.
The key was in the mess-covered can.
Time to cry and wash my hands.
This post was originally published here and has been edited to fit the format of this site.