(no subject)
Back in High School, I used to run seven days a week, often twice a day. I felt the best I ever have in my life as long as I ate about twice my own body weight. Running is also an excellent reliever of stress and an escape from the banalities and drama of daily life. Of course, when you "escape" from them, they tend to be angry that you weren't around when they needed to vent and pile it on double when you get back, but that's immaterial. Running, with all it's jostling about, can also have a laxative effect. This is a double edged sword.
On weekends I went on runs that would last for ten or twelve miles. On one such run, I had made it about half way through the circuit before I began to experience the ominous foreshadowing of the aforementioned laxative effect. It was not so much a sensation of urgency or "needing to go" as it was a feeling of looming danger. In a couple of miles, that sensation grew to become full-fledged impending doom, and with it the urgency came.
The problem with the course I had set for myself is that it did not allow for a shortcut home. It was simply five miles out on Forest Hill Boulevard, up to 10th Avenue, and back down Kirk Road to home. I would have to make a pitstop.
Evaporative cooling in Florida is a joke, especially during the summer months. The humidity is usually 100%, and if not that it's damn close. Your sweat simply has nowhere to go, so you just end up wet. So, walking into an anonymous gas station, in many ways I looked like I had just been rescued from a monsoon. I wobbled in on shaky legs, displayed a somewhat hunched over posture, was absolutely saturated in sweat, and wore a thinly veiled expression of terror on my face. I shuffled pathetically to the counter to ask the attendant where the restroom was. Without so much as batting an eyelash, he gestured that it was around the corner.
The restrooms were in a hallway seperated from the rest of the gas station by a door. If you've ever seen an anime, you'll probably have seen their convention for portraying a sudden epiphany. They'll cut to a close-up of the characters face with some intense background. A spark will be appear beside the character's head, a loud and sharp sound will be played, and the expression will suddenly change. I can't imagine a more appropriate depiction of the way I felt as soon as that door shut behind me. It hit me all at once; I realized that it was not unreasonable to think I might die right there in that filthy gas station, before my prime, having accomplished nothing.
Crossing the threshold to the men's bathroom, I was wracked by some deep machination from within. Something about it's rhythm and the shifting of mass it produced suggested the cocking of a pump-action shotgun. Some precious, prescient instinct moved me to place my shorts a safe distance away in the instant before the climactic moment.
Usually, when one thinks of "taking a shit," it is a gradual process. Even in the case of explosive diarrhea, things at least don't happen all at once. However, my intuitive categorization of the earlier bowel movement as "cocking a shotgun" proved apt. It was impossible to completely reach the sanitary sanctuary of the toilet bowl in time. Everything, quite a lot of everything, was discharged all in one awful, apocalyptic instant. Though I was in no state to hear it, I imagine this produced the same report as a shotgun as well. It dispersed as would birdshot, violating everything except my running shorts, which I'm sure were horrified. Surveying the damage, I could only laugh. I was alive! I couldn't say the same for the bathroom. But I was only halfway out. Considering my assessment of the damage (irrepairable), I decided that there was nothing I could do here and it would be best to move on. I attended to only myself and left the bathroom.
On the way out, the attendant somehow made eye contact with me. Afraid, I brazenly gave him a salute, rushed out, and resumed my exercise.
On weekends I went on runs that would last for ten or twelve miles. On one such run, I had made it about half way through the circuit before I began to experience the ominous foreshadowing of the aforementioned laxative effect. It was not so much a sensation of urgency or "needing to go" as it was a feeling of looming danger. In a couple of miles, that sensation grew to become full-fledged impending doom, and with it the urgency came.
The problem with the course I had set for myself is that it did not allow for a shortcut home. It was simply five miles out on Forest Hill Boulevard, up to 10th Avenue, and back down Kirk Road to home. I would have to make a pitstop.
Evaporative cooling in Florida is a joke, especially during the summer months. The humidity is usually 100%, and if not that it's damn close. Your sweat simply has nowhere to go, so you just end up wet. So, walking into an anonymous gas station, in many ways I looked like I had just been rescued from a monsoon. I wobbled in on shaky legs, displayed a somewhat hunched over posture, was absolutely saturated in sweat, and wore a thinly veiled expression of terror on my face. I shuffled pathetically to the counter to ask the attendant where the restroom was. Without so much as batting an eyelash, he gestured that it was around the corner.
The restrooms were in a hallway seperated from the rest of the gas station by a door. If you've ever seen an anime, you'll probably have seen their convention for portraying a sudden epiphany. They'll cut to a close-up of the characters face with some intense background. A spark will be appear beside the character's head, a loud and sharp sound will be played, and the expression will suddenly change. I can't imagine a more appropriate depiction of the way I felt as soon as that door shut behind me. It hit me all at once; I realized that it was not unreasonable to think I might die right there in that filthy gas station, before my prime, having accomplished nothing.
Crossing the threshold to the men's bathroom, I was wracked by some deep machination from within. Something about it's rhythm and the shifting of mass it produced suggested the cocking of a pump-action shotgun. Some precious, prescient instinct moved me to place my shorts a safe distance away in the instant before the climactic moment.
Usually, when one thinks of "taking a shit," it is a gradual process. Even in the case of explosive diarrhea, things at least don't happen all at once. However, my intuitive categorization of the earlier bowel movement as "cocking a shotgun" proved apt. It was impossible to completely reach the sanitary sanctuary of the toilet bowl in time. Everything, quite a lot of everything, was discharged all in one awful, apocalyptic instant. Though I was in no state to hear it, I imagine this produced the same report as a shotgun as well. It dispersed as would birdshot, violating everything except my running shorts, which I'm sure were horrified. Surveying the damage, I could only laugh. I was alive! I couldn't say the same for the bathroom. But I was only halfway out. Considering my assessment of the damage (irrepairable), I decided that there was nothing I could do here and it would be best to move on. I attended to only myself and left the bathroom.
On the way out, the attendant somehow made eye contact with me. Afraid, I brazenly gave him a salute, rushed out, and resumed my exercise.