I’m not a great traveler. I usually can’t poop in a strange environment, or with a roommate, or in a public toilet. My bowels, you see, are shy.
Peeing is not a problem. My mom used to run the water when I couldn’t pee as a kid. Now all I have to do is think about running water and I can go like a race horse. But not number two.
I spent my eight-day trip taking my packet-sized doses of Miralax in hot cocoa. But realistically, I wasn’t drinking the same quantity during the day. No Snapple to be found anywhere. Many museums have a no-water policy. Heck, the White House won’t even let you bring a purse, only a wallet.
Funny story, my daughter is thirty, but the Secret Service guy at the White House asked me if she was under 18. She spoke up that she was born in 1994. The other Secret Service guy said, “Then you’re 29, because I’m 28 and I was born in 1995.” My daughter explained that she’d already had her birthday this year so she was indeed 30. The other secret service guy laughed and laughed at the SS guy who didn’t understand that he hadn’t had his birthday yet and that he would be 29 in 2024.
But I digress. I ate spinach salad, I ate M & Ms, I took my laxative faithfully. I even drank coffee from the Keurig machine in our hotel room. Nothing to show for it except dribs and drabs. Then I started to get nervous. My six-hour flight was coming up, and there’s nothing worse than needing to go poo at 28,000 feet. Enjoy the go? No! How can you even relax in a tiny airplane bathroom?
With turbulence and nothing to hold onto except the rim of that nasty sink, the one being used by people in 37 rows, six seats a row? In a full plane? That’s about 200 people (since only four per row in first class), plus the crew. Well, two bathrooms in economy seating.
I had the window seat with a polite man from Europe in the middle seat and a tiny older woman on the aisle. The first time I asked my seat mates to let me out, we’d only been in the air 15 minutes. The flight attendants were rolling out the drink cart, and I didn’t want to get caught where I couldn’t get out. The guy had to put away his laptop because of ME, ME, ME and my shy bowels.
The man and the tiny lady let me out of the seat, and the tiny lady decided she might as well go, too, since she was already up.
The second time we all got up was when the man decided he needed to go. The older lady and I went, too, because why not? It seemed like an opportunity to try again. We moved together.
It’s hard to know how much you have gone while staring into a stainless steel toilet bowl in bad lighting while the line of people outside the thin plastic door wait for you to flush and come out. I’m not sure it was measurable, but at least I was getting rid of some flatulence, something that all my seat mates surely appreciated.
Whoever thought this would be a blog post topic? As they say, aging ain’t for sissies. Young ones, you have been forewarned.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 