My memory was recently sparked by a post from my friend Amanda about college bathrooms and I remembered a story about the confused pooper. I should do more material about college, but most of it isn’t very believable to the average person. For three years, I lived in a fraternity house with 33 other guys. It was like a living organism of pure chaos and destruction and mostly, a petri dish of filth and fun. It constantly smelled like old yeast and beer. I remember guys’ moms leaving in tears as they helped their sons move in.
One feature that really stood out when I was there was the absence of stalls or doors in the bathrooms. There was an upstairs and downstairs bathroom, identical. Three sinks on the left, showers in the back, and two toilets and a urinal on the right. Literally the only chance you had of privacy was to poo at 5 am, which exactly no one ever did. I knew guys that would walk a mile to campus to use the cleaner facilities.
One night, having forgotten to lock my door, I awoke after 3 am to a fellow brother staring at the glider chair in the room. I was directly across from him on the couch I slept on. He was fixated on the chair. “What’s up, man?” No answer. “What’s going on?” Nothing. He just kept staring a hole in the red chair, the only piece of new furniture in my worldly possession. He finally reached down, flipped up the seat cushion, and dropped his pants. As he spun into a poo crouch, I moved like the wind. Faster, actually, the wind never had anyone drop a deuce on their favorite chair. My roommate had also sprung to action as we wrestled him, depantsed, from the chair and into the bathroom. He realized, in his stupor, that his surroundings were more appropriate, then sat down and passed out, pants around ankles. I didn’t stick around to see what happened next. We locked our door more often after that.