Shitting. We all do it. Not shitting out words onto paper or lies into the atmosphere…but asses on toilets crapping out a reproduction of our dietary intake. Yet I meet so many people with hangups about their shit. The girl next to me laughs as she read her friend’s away message…”on the fourth floor”. She informs me her friend refuses to poop in her office so she heads to the fourth floor. I had a professor who refused to poop in public bathrooms. If forced to do so, he would have to leave his office, drive home, and shower. After a few missed appointments, I told him to lay off the fiber .
Shitting. I have shat in a stall next to some of the biggest names in my field…and smelled the ripeness of shit from these academic monsters. In the shared stench of a crowded conference bathroom I am reminded we are all human…we all shit.
It is a revelation any child could share with me. When my nephew was little he was afraid to poop. We would find him in a corner, red faced, trying to pretend he didn’t just take a giant shit in his pants. But we knew. We bought him a book called Everybody Poops. The premise was simple…mommy poops, daddy poops….we taught him to be proud of his poop.
Later, my poop-phobic nephew had a little brother. At his christening my family looked wonderful- sober and clean and piously quiet for the first time in years. From the candle lit stage where my newest nephew sat sleeping in his mothers arms came the sound of a small voice
…EVERYBODY POOPS. MOMMY POOPS. DADDY POOPS. PASTER DON POOPS.
it was amplified by the mike on stage and echoed throughout the polished wood and stained glass sanctuary. The solemn moment of holiness was broken…by the reminder we all shit.
In moments where I feel insignificant, when I feel cowed and intimidated I remind myself that we all shit. Onto a page or into a bowl we have moments of putrid messiness…warm nastiness, regurgitation of the good and bad things we have ingested. It is the shit that keeps us all human. It is hard to be haughty when your stench lingers in a stall.
