Scat

I really don’t know why, but I’ve always had a fascination with poop. When I have a good bowel movement I will stare at it for hours, or until someone starts banging on the door. There’s something about poop that makes me curious. I wouldn’t call this an obsession; you won’t find me looking at crap porn in the middle of the night, and it doesn’t consume my mind all the time. I think it is merely the scientific muse within me that wants to find out all I can about it when I come across a turd, especially someone else’s. Think about it. It’s kind of magical, really. You put food in your mouth and in a few hours it comes out again, transformed into a log of brown wonder. I think it can even be compared to childbirth, if you think of food as sperm and stomach acid as eggs. I don’t dwell on that comparison, by the way. Before you start getting all judgmental, let me tell you that there is actually a branch of science that focuses on poop, called scatology. I really think I was born to be a scatologist but didn’t realize it until it was too late to get into the field. That’s ok. I’ll happily be an amateur, a wanna be, a civilian scatologist. Great discoveries have come from the private sector before, but I can’t think of them now because I’ve got poop on my mind now.

It started in childhood when my mother would periodically find turds under my mattress. They weren’t mine, either, well I mean they didn’t come out of me. Whenever I went in the bathroom and discovered one that hadn’t flushed, I had an overpowering urge to rescue it. Sometimes there was so much toilet paper that I just couldn’t save it, but it was never from lack of trying. I can hear you wondering how I retrieved those darlings from their watery grave, so I’ll tell you. I kept a good supply of empty toilet paper rolls on hand just for such occasions. It’s like that’s what they were made for, really. I only touched poop when I examined it, rolling it over to see if I could find something that hadn’t quite digested. When I got older I would use my mom’s dishwashing gloves, or would snatch a handful of rubber gloves from the doctor’s office. I always fought the urge to palpate the poop bare-handed, because I knew how difficult it was to get it out from my fingernails, and it would sometimes take weeks to get the smell off my hands. Well, there was the whole thing about being sanitary, too.

When I was a kid I just kept turds the way I found them, but eventually I began to explore their inner workings, in the name of science, mind you. Do you realize you can tell a lot about a person by their crap? A normal poop is medium brown, with the consistency of toothpaste, and is usually 4 to 8 inches long. I’ve never found another person’s poop over a foot long, but once after eating a bunch of Mexican food at my niece’s in Houston, I pushed out a turd that was EIGHTEEN AND A HALF inches long, counting the taper. I’ve got photos, too. Anyway, that’s the morphology of a normal poop. If a turd sinks, it usually means that a person isn’t eating enough fiber-rich foods, such as vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, or drinking enough water. This stool is often dark because they have been sitting in the intestines for a prolonged time. Stool that is pale or grey, especially if it is shiny and greasy, is indicative of being saturated with undigested fat. Sticky mucous in the turd means there is an inflammation in the intestines. I could go on forever, literally. There are different colored poops that point to certain disorders, there is the classic chimichanga explosive crap, pencil-thin turds and pellets. By now hopefully you’re beginning to catch some of the excitement I feel when I think about poop.

I apologize if this subject offends you or makes you ill, but it is a natural function of the body; after all, I mean, we all ‘doo’ it. You should be proud of your poop for many reasons, but mostly because it brings out the worst in you. The next time you squeeze out a log, make sure to thank it for its service and sacrifice. I’d be grateful if you took a photo of it and shared it with the rest of us. I know, it takes extraordinary courage, but you’ll feel so much better afterwards. Isn’t that how a good crap should make you feel?