The Taming of the Poo

Gather round, kiddies. Put on your warmest pyjamas, grab your blankets, and settle in to hear a story that will make your blood run cold, your soul cry fat tears, and your skin crawl. This tale is not for the squeamish, the proper, or the young. Hold onto each other. You'll never be the same inside.

This post comes with a big-assed warning. If you have a weak stomach, turn away. I'll mock you because I'm over 7 months pregnant and I could handle it, but sometimes being a pussy is better than being mentally scarred. Sometimes.

Wednesday was a regular day. The sun was out, the temperature was rising, my coffee was made...all was right in the world. Work was good, busy but not overwhelming, and I saw my first robin of the year. A man wearing a work vest came into our clinic and asked to use the washroom - I said sure, feeling sympathy for a worker that spends his day in a truck going from site to site where there aren't always functioning toilets. On the radio was my favourite station, Fab 94.3 with hits from the 60s and 70s, and I was bopping around and whistling, and letting the sun shine in.

I completely forgot about the man in the washroom until he ran out 10 minutes later. It slightly irritated me that he never said thank you, but was too busy now bopping along to Son of a Preacher Man and having dirty catholic-tainted fantasies to really mind.

Until a smell hit me.

A bad smell.

A very, very bad smell.

My boss noticed it as well, but he went to investigate while I was content to just sit at my desk and write off the bad smell to just being overly-sensitive. He came up to my desk and asked who the guy was that used the washroom, and I told him some guy in a work vest - maybe a construction worker nearby, and asked if he had left the washroom in a mess. My boss was wide-eyed and stunned, but simply answered yes. I didn't go look, I was fuming that I allowed the worker to use the washroom and he left a stink and didn't even thank us for the privilege of leaving a stink. I ran outside, intending to walk to the work site and yell at him in front of his coworkers for being raised in a barn. There was no one outside, but our clinic is next to a gas station so I decided to pop in there and see if anyone working there had seen this man. The girl was more than courteous, providing me with his employer and information about his work truck.

I went back to our clinic, where my boss was standing by my desk looking shell-shocked. I told him I knew the worker and his employer, a very prominent employer, and would file a complaint. My boss just kept shaking his head. I told him it would be fine, I had some cleaner, I'd go tidy up the smell and clean the bowl.

Boss: No, Carole. I'll need to get gloves, and more cleaner, and a mop, and possibly other things.

Me: We have gloves, I'll grab them from one of the rooms.

Boss: No, Carole. You'll need gloves up to your elbows.

Me: (laughing) It can't be that bad?

Boss: Go look.

So I went and looked. At first it didn't really register with me exactly what had happened. Our bathroom looked muddy, like a car station washroom. There was mud on the floor, the walls, the toilet, the sink, the garbage can...mud swirled around with footprints in it, smeared everywhere. Was he muddy? I didn't see any mud on him. And then I realized I wasn't look at mud.

I was looking at poo.

Poo was everywhere. He had painted my washroom, my clean girly washroom with the towel dispenser, tea tree oil soap, and baby changing station entirely with poo.

I've read about the five stages of grief. I've never gone through them in the space of three minutes before, and I never would have found it possible, but I did. There was denial:

No, no. This is mud, not poo. Who would do this with poo? There's obviously been some sort of mistake. He's coming back to clean this. Surely. Anytime now.

Then came anger:

What the FUCK is wrong with that guy? I let him use the washroom! This is social injustice. How could he repay my kindness in this way?? I'm calling his employer and lodging a complaint. I'm going to embarrass the shit out of him - not that there's any left.

Next was bargaining:

We can't clean this. This cannot be cleaned. We need an old priest, and a young priest, and then we need the cleansing power of fire. Yes, we will just burn the place down. We will work in a trailer in the parking lot until our clinic is rebuilt, and that's just what we're going to have to do. Yeah, we'll do that. Okay? Please?

And then depression:

I just want to go home, crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head and wake up on Saturday.

Finally, acceptance:

It's poo. I have to clean it. Just give me the fucking gloves, pail, mop and cleaner and stay out of my way.


It took me almost 40 minutes. At first there was gagging, and the awful realisation that if I did throw up in the toilet some of it could splash back onto me - so I had to run outside a few times until the need to vomit passed. But after awhile came this really odd pride - who else could do this? Really? I'm fucking hardcore. I'm cleaning this, and I'm not throwing up. I'm not happy, but I'm not crying. I'm 7 months pregnant and scooping poo up off of a floor. I'm the hardest woman alive.

I finally finished cleaning, the bathroom restored to its former glory. It smelled clean, and looked clean, with no trace of the shit demon from Dogma that climbed out of the toilet and stropped around nearly an hour before. I threw out everything, and text my boss that we needed a new toilet brush as it could not be saved. I carried the bag to the dumpster outside, ran to my car, went home and threw off all my clothes and stood in the shower for 30 minutes, scrubbing and finally crying a bit. The clothes went into the wash, and I exfoliated every inch of myself, desperate for new skin that wasn't exposed to poo.

Shiny, clean and pink I did return to work that afternoon (I'm hard!) to find my boss had flowers delivered for me, as well as a huge gift card for a very expensive restaurant as a thank you. I was stunned, and spent most of the afternoon just shaking my head slowly, gazing into the distance, much like a soldier back from war and unable to describe the atrocities seen. My boss and I knew what had happened, the devastation and eventual rebirth of the clean washroom bringing us closer together. We were there. We saw. And we made it back.

Things that go bump in the night, and then eat my brains.

I'm terrified of the dark. Actually, I'm terrified of a lot of things. I had a very over-active imagination as a child. Basements horrified me, giving me recurring nightmares where I was stranded in a basement for no apparent reason, with a door behind me that was going to open at any second and reveal the creature behind it. I would scream for help, and the tiniest squeak would come out. My movements became futile, I moved as if underwater. Unable to scream, unable to move, and then the door would start to open...And in it was the guy from the Micheal Jackson video Thriller. He scared the living shit right out of me, the guy that does the talking at the end and then the maniacal laughing. I still hate that song.

Another nightmare was full of dinosaurs. Some were my allies, some wanted to eat me. My friendly dinosaurs were apathetic and useless, fat cartoony things that sat around eating pizza while I begged for their help, running around corners and hiding under tables trying to get away from the much slimmer and meaner carnivorous dinosaurs.

Fighting in dreams was also an exercise in futility, my arms turning into noodles and having the physical impact of a marshmallow. Once I had to beat a man to death in a dream with a vacuum cleaner, and it took me ages of lifting it and slightly dropping it on his face.

I'm not sure what it is about the dark that scares me so much, or even how it started. I remember eavesdropping on my mother one night talking with a friend about Stephen King's book IT, but not knowing it was an actual book - I thought it was a news story, and spent the rest of the night unable to go to the toilet thinking a clown was going to rip my arms off. I was in physical agony, but at least my arms were still on.

As an adult I still scare quite easily. I've given up on watching horror movies, but am naturally curious so still want to know what happens. The Ring took a good few years off of my life, I think, and it was after that movie I decided to stop watching them for curiosity's sake and just read the synopsis for each one on wikipedia. This way at least I know what happens without having to leave the lights on in the hallway at night for three months, or having a nervous breakdown one night when the bathroom floods without me realizing and I step in an inch of cold water on the floor. Graham learned the hard way, he thought it would be hilarious to show me a video about a Swedish car commercial where the person in a hideous mask jumps out at you at the end - he told me to lean forward really close and turn the sound up, and the resulting hysterical and sobbing/screaming woman who refused to go back into the computer room of the house was enough that he's never done anything like that since.

I wonder what age I'll be when I no longer run up basement steps, convinced something is chasing me? Or how many decades I have ahead of me checking behind the shower curtain every time I go to the washroom? Does it keep me young, or have my fears prematurely aged me? And what the HELL is that noise in the closet?!