Now, I admit that a small number of items are perhaps slight

fabrications, but I have a story to tell that is the absolute truth.

Funniest damn thing that has ever happened to me.

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I decided to cruise over to Ryan's

Steakhouse for

dinner. It was a Wednesday night which means that beef and macaroni was on

the hot bar, indeed the only night of the week that it is served.

Wednesday night is also kid's night at Ryan's, complete with Dizzy the

Clown wandering from table to table entertaining the little bastards. It

may seem that the events about to be told have little connection to those

two circumstances, but all will be clear in a moment.

We went through the line and placed our orders for the all-you-can-eat hot

bar then sat down as far away from the front of the restaurant as

possible in order to keep the density of kids down a bit.

Then I started my move to the hot bar. Plate after plate of macaroni and

beef were consumed that evening. I tell you-in all, four heaping plates of

the pseudo-Italian ambrosia were shoved into my belly. I was sated.

Perhaps a bit too much, however.

I had not really been feeling well all day, what with a bit of gas and

such. By the time I had eaten four heaping plates of food, I was in

real trouble. There was so much pressure on my diaphragm that I was

having trouble breathing. At the same time, the downward pressure was

building. At first, I thought it was only gas which could have been passed

in batches right at the table without to much concern.

Unfortunately, that was not to be. After a minute or so it was clear that

I was dealing with something absolutely explosive in nature. It's amazing

how grease can make

its way through your intestines far faster than the food which spawned the

grease to begin with, but I digress.........

I got up from the table and made my way to the bathroom. Upon entering, I

saw two sinks immediately inside the door, two urinals just to the right of

the sinks, and two toilet stalls against the back wall. One of them was

a handicapped stall. Now, normally I would have gone to the handicapped

stall since I like to stretch out a bit when I relieve myself. But in this

case the door lock was broken and the only thing I hate worse than my wife

telling me to stop cutting my toenails with a pair of diagonal

wire cutters is having someone walk in on me while I am taking a shit. I

went to the normal stall.

In retrospect, I probably should have gone to the large, handicapped stall

because that bit of time lost in making the stall switch proved to be a bit

too long under the

circumstances. By the time I had walked into the regular stall, the

pressure

on my ass was reaching Biblical proportions.

I began "The Move."

For those women who may be reading this, let me take a moment to explain

"The Move." Men know exactly what their bowels are up to at any given

second. And when the time comes to empty the cache, a sequence of

physiological events occur that cannot be stopped under any

circumstances. There is a move men make that involves simultaneously

approaching the toilet, beginning the body turn to position one's ass

toward said toilet, hooking one's fingers into one's waistline, and pulling

down the pants while beginning the squat at the same time. It is a very

fluid motion that, when performed properly, results in the flawless

expulsion of shit at the exact same second that one's ass is properly

placed on the toilet seat.

Done properly, it even assures that the choad is properly inserted into

the front rim of the toilet in the event that the piss stream lets loose

at the same time; it is truly a picture of coordination rivaling that of a

skilled ballet dancer.

I was about half-way into "The Move" when I looked down at the floor and

saw a pile of vomit that had been previously expelled by one of those

little bastards attending kids night; it was mounded up in the corner so I

did not notice it when I had first walked into the stall.

Normally, I would not have been bothered by such a thing, but I had eaten

so much and the pressure upward was so intense, that I had a rarely

experienced gag reflex. And once that reflex started, combined with the

intense pressure upward caused by the bloated stomach, four plates of

macaroni and beef came up for a rematch.

What happened next was so quick that the exact sequence of events are a

bit fuzzy, but I will try to reconstruct them as best I can.

In that moment of impending projectile vomiting, my attention was diverted

from the goings-on at the other end. To put a freeze frame on the

situation, I was half crouched down to the toilet, pants pulled down to

my knees, with a load of vomit coming up my esophagus.

Now, most of you know that vomiting takes precedence over shit no matter

what is about to come slamming out of your ass. It is apparently an

evolutionary thing since shitting will not kill you, but vomiting takes a

presence of mind to accomplish so that you do not aspirate any food into

the bronchial tubes and perhaps choke to death. My attention was thus

diverted.

At that very split second, my ass exploded in what can only be described

as a wake...you know, as in a newspaper headline along the lines of

"30,000 Killed In Wake of Typhoon Fifi" or something similar. In what

seemed to be most suitably measured in cubic feet, an enormous plug of

shit the consistency of thick mud with embedded pockets of greasy liquid

came flying out of my ass. But remember, I was only half-way down on the

toilet at that moment. The shit wave was of such force and of just such an

angle in relation to the back curve of the toilet seat that it ricocheted

off the back of the seat and slammed into the wall at an angle of

incidence equal to the angle at which it initially hit the toilet seat.

Then I sat down.

Recall that when that event occurred, I was already half-way sitting

anyway and had actually reached the point of no return. I have always

considered myself as relatively stable gravitationally, but when you get

beyond a certain point, you're going down no matter how limber you may be.

Needless to say, the shit wave, though of considerable force, was not so

sufficient so as to completely glance off the toilet seat and deposit

itself on the walls, unlike what you would see when hitting a puddle with

a high-pressure water hose; even though you throw water at the puddle, the

puddle gets moved and no water is left to re-form a puddle. There was a

significant amount of shit remaining on about one-third of the seat rim

which I had now just collapsed upon.

Now, back to the vomit.

While all the shitting was going on, the vomit was still on its way up.

By the time I had actually collapsed on the toilet, my mouth had filled up

with a good portion of the macaroni and beef I had just consumed. OK, so

what does the human body instinctively do when vomiting? One bends over.

So I bent over. I was still sitting on the toilet, though. Therefore,

bending over resulted in me placing my head above my now slightly-opened

legs, positioned in between my knees and waist. Also directly above my

pants which were now pulled down to a point just midway between my knees

and my ankles. In one mighty push, some three pounds of macaroni

and beef, two or three Cokes, and a couple of Big, Fat Yeast Rolls were

deposited inside my pants

In the next several seconds, there were a handful of farts, a couple of

turds, and the event finally ended. Yet I was now sitting there with my

pants full

of vomit, my back covered in shit that had bounced off the toilet,

spattered on three ceramic-tiled walls to a height of about five feet, and

still had enough force to come back at me, covering the back of my shirt

with droplets of liquid shit. All while thick shit was spread all over my

ass in a ring curiously in the shape of a toilet seat.

And there was no fucking toilet paper.

What could I do but laugh? I must have sounded like a complete maniac to

the guy who then wandered into the bathroom. He actually asked if I was OK

since I was laughing so hard I must have sounded like I was hysterically

crying.

I calmed down just enough to ask him if he would get the

manager. And I told him to have the manager bring some toilet paper.

When the manager walked in, he brought the toilet paper with him, but in

no way was prepared for what happened next. I simply told him that there

was no way I was going to explain what was happening in the stall, but

that I needed several wet towels and I needed him to go ask my wife to

come help me. I told him where I had been sitting and he left. At that

point,

I think he was probably assuming that I had pissed just a bit in my pants

or something similarly benign.

About two minutes later, my wife came into the bathroom not knowing what

was wrong and with a certain amount of worry in her voice. I explained to

her (still laughing and having trouble getting out words) that I had had a

slight accident and needed her help. Knowing I'd experienced some

close calls in the past, she probably assumed that I laid down a small

turd or something and just needed to bring the car around so we could bolt

immediately. Until I asked her, I'm sure she had no idea that she was

about to go across the street and purchase me new underwear, new socks,

new pants, a new shirt, and new sneakers.

And she then began to laugh herself since I was still laughing. She

began to ask for an explanation as to what had happened when I promised

her that I would tell her later, but that I just needed to handle damage

control for the time being. She left.

The manager then came back in with a half-dozen wet towels and a few dry

ones. I asked him to also bring a mop and bucket upon which he assured me

that they would clean up anything that needed to be cleaned. Without

giving him specific details, I explained that what was going on in that

stall that night was far in excess of what I would expect anyone to deal

with, what with most of the folks working at Ryan's making minimum wage or

just slightly above. At that moment, I think it dawned on him exactly the

gravity of the situation. Then that manager went so far above the call of

duty that I will be eternally grateful for his actions.

The he hooked up a hose.

Fortunately, commercial bathrooms are constructed with tile walls and tile

floors and have a drain in the middle of the room in order to make a clean

up such as this easy. He hooked up the hose to the spigot located under the

sink.

I began cleaning myself up with the wet towels. Just as I was finishing, my

wife got back with the

new clothes and passed them into the stall, whereupon I stuffed the

previously worn clothing into the plastic bag that came from the store,

handing the bag to my wife. I finished cleaning myself off and carefully

put on my new clothes, still stuck in the stall since I figured that it

would be in bad taste to go out of the stall to get redressed in the event

I happened to be standing there naked and some little bastard kid walked

in. At that point, I had only made a mess; I had not yet committed a

felony and intended to keep it that way.

When I finished getting dressed, I picked up the hose and cleaned up the

entire stall, washing down the remains toward the drain in the center of

the room. I put down the hose and walked out of the bathroom. I had

intended to go to the manager and thank him for all he had done, but when

I walked out, three of the management staff were there to greet me with a

standing ovation. I started laughing so hard that I thought I was going to

throw up again, but managed to scurry out to the car where my wife was now

waiting to pick me up by the front door.

The upshot of all this is that I strongly recommend dinning at

Ryan's Steak House. They have, by far, the most accommodative, and

understanding, management staff of any

restaurant in which I have eaten.