Falling Down In Public

Yesterday I went out for a walk, stopping by several book stores along College St looking for a specific book and generally having a nice little Sunday. When I decided it was time to head home, I grabbed the High Park street car, which lets you off at some random point in the south-easterly section of High Park. I live at the central-north section of the park, so I figured a nice way to cap off my Sunday would be a pleasant walk through the park.

I decide to veer off the road and take a path through the trees and bushes, as it didn't look to be too messy. It was pretty. What I did not realize though, was that i was headed in the direction of the off-leash area of the High Park Dog Park. For obvious reasons, the dog park is fenced in.



So I'm walking through the tress and the bushes and I come to this fence. On the other side are a hand full of people walking their dogs. To my left is a gate, so i walk to it and push on it only to find that it is bolted shut, something they would do to discourage use of the icy trails in the winter. So I grab the gate with my hand and throw my leg up. Once I was sure I had good footing, I swung my body to get myself over the fence. Only the gate swung open, ruining whatever precarious balance I had. My legs go completely out from under my and I have become that idiot that couldn't operate a gate and instead fell flat on his face.

I pick myself up off the ground and let out a quick chuckle at the shocked "oh my!" that came from one of the dog owners who saw this whole thing. I brushed myself off and zoomed outta there as fast as I could. HOW EMBARRASSING!



And this is my point. Falling down is always embarrassing. It is always the result of being too stupid to pull off an everyday maneuver like 'walking' or 'sitting on a chair'. In this case, i was the weirdo who emerged from the woods and was too stupid to operate a gate. In other cases, I'm the idiot who couldn't turn around during a basketball game. Or the moron who couldn't balance himself while walking down a hill.

It is made worse by the fact that usually when you fall, the people around you do not fall. You really can't help but draw attention to yourself when your feet go out from under your arms flail in every direction and you let out a loud "whooaaaAHHH!" And I know for sure that everyone around is thinking "Oh man, what a bafoon! That idiot can't even walk! Hilarious!" How do I know they're thinking this? Because this is exactly what I am thinking when ever I see someone fall. Seeing someone fall is consistently funny, and I think most people agree.



When you fall, it is like becoming a baby for the briefest of moments. Even small children can walk and stand and sit and keep themselves generally balanced. You're an adult, man, how dumb to you have to be to fall down?

Crapping My Pants In Public

Now, before I get into this, I would like to just make it clear that this has never happened to me before. Not once have I ever lost control of my bowels in public.

There are certain things that one can do in order to complete destroy any semblance of dignity that they have. These are the events in your life that destroy friendships and reputations beyond repair. I am not one to embarrass too easily, and I am very lucky that I have a group of friends that are both understanding and forgiving of any sort of lapse in character I may have, as I am with them. Sure we make fun of each other, like my one friend's disgusting maggot farm that is her bedroom, or the fact that another friend somehow managed to get poop on the toilet seat and didn't clean it up, or the various times various friends have gotten so drunk that they either fell in a lake pantsless or fell off a roof, but these are pretty forgivable lapses and are genuinely hilarious aspects of my groups of friends that I would not do without. Behaviour that many people would find reprehensible is accepted with glee among my crew. None of us has yet to do anything forgivable.

However, there are peripheral characters who pop up ev

ery once in a while to challenge what we find acceptable. Golden Boy is one such character. One night, six or so years ago, this guy came to a party hosted by my friends. He proceeded to chug a 26er of Canadian Club, and although he was a bigger guy, he quickly became unmanageably drunk. After accosting my friend's sister, he pissed himself and fell down in the middle of the room. Laying there face down, he puked quite a bit and passed out.

Obviously we should have tried to get him to a hospital to treat his alcohol poisoning, but we...uh...didn't. We just kind of left him there and continued to party around him. Someone cleaned him up a little and made sure he wasn't choking on his own vomit, but really, he just was there on the floor while we all continued on.

This would have been forgivable. Whatever, it happens. Sometimes young people drink too much.

However, later in the night he woke up. I don't know if you'd exactly call him conscious at this point, but he was standing and moving and stuff. Everyone was happy that he was not dead. that is, everyone was happy until he decided he needed to use the washroom but was too drunk to comprehend that he was, in fact, in a bedroom. He just whipped it out right there, in a room full of about 12 people, and peed all over my friend's desk and computer chair while everyone left the room as though it was on fire. He then sat down at the computer, and I'm not sure what happened next (I had seen enough) I always presumed he looked up some porn or something, as he was a skeezy perv. Some time later we checked in on him to find him rolled up in my friend's bed, still wearing his soiled clothing.

Again, this may have been forgivable. It would have taken a while for him to live it down, but, hey, he was drunk. Bad things happen.

My friend slept in my out of town roommate's bed in my dorm that night, his bed obvious being used in the worst way. In the morning, we decided to check to see if Golden Boy, as he was now affectionately known since he had such a golden night, had made it make to his room in the dorm. He came to the door when we knocked and he looked awful, understandably. My friend began grilling him about the previous night, being rather friendly about it, until he learned that the guy hadn't cleaned up anything and had no intention of doing so. Golden Boy then said with a sigh, "Real mature guys" and shut the door in our faces.

This was the unforgivable part. That guy was a dick, and we made sure that his dickery was well known (perhaps too much so, but that's another story.)

This is just a round about way of saying that crapping yourself in public is one of those things that you cannot expect to be forgiven for. It is the lowest of the low. If it ever happened to me, especially if it happened around my wonderful friends, I can say with confidence that I would no longer have those wonderful friends. It is the most embarrassing thing an adult can do.

Obviously there are certain situations where it is acceptable. You're super sick and in need of hospitalization (like, sick with a disease, not with alcohol...you should know not to drink that much by now.) You're giving birth in public by accident. You...actually, I think those are the only two. Crazy old person who is losing control of their body, I guess. For the most part, it should never, ever happen. And if it does happen for any reason not in the above, you deserve scorn.

Now, why would I be worried about this? I'm a reasonably healthy adult who has never had this problem before. Well, I'll tell you why.

One, I have digestive issues. Without going into too much detail, they get kind of weird sometimes. The only real effect this has on my public life is that I'm crazy gassy sometimes. But this is why it makes me worry. How far away from farting a lot is pooping a lot? Not very far.

Two, I don't ever want it to happen. I can be kind of paranoid sometimes, and when this gets the better of me I really start to think that only bad things can happen. Since this is the baddest thing, it's probably going to happen. that's how the world works when I'm paranoid.

Three, It's not like you just poop yourself at, say, work and then that's the end of the story. No. There is like, a whole other chapter that happens afterwards where you have to somehow deal with your poopy pants in public. You would have to walk from work to the subway with poopy pants, be on the subway with poppy pants, walk from the subway to your home with poopy pants. Walk through your building with poopy pants and then find a new job because you'd never be able to show your face in that place again. Oh, and kiss that reference good bye, because you crapped yourself in the presence of your boss. If you crap yourself in public, at the very least you are going to have to walk by 500 people and sever any and all relationships that you have with those that witness. Some people search for life changing experiences, forgetting that one is waiting for them in there bowels. And that's the worst part, that's the part that scares me.

Public pants pooping is akin to, like, hitting a girl or verbally abusing a child. You can't live it down because it changes forever the way people look at you. The other part that scares me is that it could just happen. It's improbable, but possible. I could just randomly loose control one day and BOOM, life is over and there is nothing I could do about it. I know I'll never hit a girl or berate a child because that stuff would happen in my brain first and my reasoning ability would never allow me to go through with it because I'm not a crazy person. But my ability to reason has no control over the mysterious inner workings of the body, and just like that twitch I get in my left knee that sometimes last for hours, or whenever I get hiccups, my bowels could decide to do something unpredictable and uncontrollable and there isn't a damn thing my powerful brain could do to stop it.

Curse this body, curse all it's disgusting features.