I got tired shoveling snow the other day. I thought I felt like shit. Times like this demand that one ask oneself, "Do I really feel terrible? Do I qualify for woe?"
It may be helpful, in such moments, to establish a scale of woe. Here are a few check points:
1. Lightly chapped lips/ bad radio song stuck in head (low woe)
2. You are reminded of when your first pet died many years ago.
3. Flu/ long DMV line (moderate woe)
4. You're a Hollywood agent representing only Sinbad and Pauly Shore.
5. Severe diarrhea fills your pants in a public venue.
6. You just hit your thumb with a hammer in cold weather
7. You just backed a truck over your dog, and it won't stop yelping.
8. You're the dog (see 7).
9. You're a tunnel rat in Vietnam, and the tunnel collapses.
10. Crucifixion with mockery and biting flies (maximum woe, but no need to found a religion)
With these ratings in mind, I give the 10-hour snow shoveling marathon a 3.5, and I don't think I've ever gone past 7.
Stay tuned for our next topic, "What is the opposite of an orgy?"
3 comments:
I had about a 4 couple weeks ago. It all started Friday night. I was sort of hungry around bedtime and we had these raw almonds (not roasted), so I was eating some and they hit the spot so just kept eating them--I must have eaten about a pound of almonds. Had to work Saturday morning. The commuter train I usually take to the suburbs doesn't run early enough on Saturday morning, so once a month I have to either get a ride, rent a car, or take the subway as far as it goes then get a cab. I was doing the latter, which takes about 2 hours total. Being jerked and lurched around on the L it started to hurt. I had to shit bad. Arrived at Cumberland--no public restroom. Asked at a mini store in station--no. I know these people must shit somewhere so I plead a little--no. Briefly consider doing it on sidewalk in front of mini store. Also, it is cold as hell. Where is nearest restroom? Eyes watering. At walgreens across the freeway 10 minute walk. So I cross footbridge across freeway down the stairs to a sidewalk on a grassy median next to empty parking lot. It is coming NOW. So I squat in the grass, thank god no one is around. Leave a steaming pile of creamy whip and wipe with some grass. Run back to see if cab has arrived/left without me. Cab is there but ends up charging $15 extra coz it's a city cab not a suburban cab. WTF? So I was sure to pay him with my stink hand.
Bowels can be ferocious and uncompromising. I wish someone could get Secret Service men to write tell-alls about Presidential bowel emergencies, cuz it's gotta happen.
It is ironic that the mechanics of a major metropolis cornered you into such primitive bathrooming. You're like a Shit Kafka. You're like a poop pioneer. Come to think of it, when we were Pioneers in grade 6, I sometimes felt an anxiety that tastes just slightly like the undertow of this story, a whiff of doom, like meeting David Minehardt for the first time.
I have also felt the wrath of Chicago's public restrooms. I assume that everyone there is too full of sausage and cheese to every have to shit. At some point there will be a mass shitting bowl storm the likes the world has never seen, well except since Gozer the Gozerian. My education was at O'Hare in some isolated new wing. Not wanting to chance it I used the only public restroom near the boarding gate and the only one for at least a 5 minute walk. It was a cozy 2 seater which would have been just fine, except that someone had already violently, tortured and destroyed...well something, not sure really, but needless to say #1 was out of commission. Forced to the 2 hole, I found myself face-to-face with some diabolical auto-self-extracting-sanitary-cellophane monster that was locking the entrance similar to a chastity belt securing a virgin honey pot. I’m not sure what it would take to kill that thing, but I know that it was time and pressure that led me to the punishment I extracted on the beast. I feel sorry for the poor bastards that stumbled upon that scene and especially the one that had to clean it, but hey that’s what extreme defecation is all about!
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